Oh yeah

Sour Pork Soup



So I got some free pork bones from work today and here's what I made with them. It's inspired by the authentic Polish soups made at work by the in-house chef. They have a unique sour/sweetness to them, and can be quite oily and fatty but SO GOOD and filling for such a thin soup. I had to guess at ingredients to mimic it and I think this turned out well.

Ingredients
- pork bones
- salt, pepper, preferred seasoning*
- vinegar and lemon juice
- olive/canola/any cooking oil
- preferred vegetables* (cabbage recommended)
- a lot of water
- rice or small noodles (optional, I used rice)

* I used sriracha and crushed chilis for some spice. The spices I used were just garlic powder, onion powder and a Polish garlic pepper. I love garlic. The veggies I used were carrots, frozen corn, onion and red cabbage.

Steps
Note that everything is to your taste and depends on how big your pork bones are. This soup would probably be good with any bones, really.

1. I seared my pork bones in the pot slightly to get the flavour going. I put a generous amount of my dry seasonings, oil and sriracha on the bones while they seared.

2. After searing I boiled the bones for approx. 1-2 hours on medium-high (covered). I added vinegar, lemon juice, salt and more seasoning to my taste as I went.

3. After about 1-2 hours of boiling I removed the bones and then removed all of the meat and chopped it into tiny cubes (or shredded it). I put both the bones and meat back into the pot to continue boiling.

4. While the meat was boiling for a second time I cut my vegetables into small pieces and added them to the pot. I also added a small amount of rice.

5. Simmer until all hard vegetables are soft. Add more vinegar as you go until you get a pleasant sour/sweet taste. Not much is needed so only add about a tsp at a time and taste after simmering for a minute. The vinegar acts as a sort of concentrated salt but brings out the flavour of the pork more.

6. Remove the bones (duh).

ALL DONE! It's super successful and amazingly cheap. You could probably make this with just bones, salt, pepper, vinegar, garlic powder and cabbage. IDK about anywhere else, but here privately owned butchers sometimes give away bones or sell for very cheap. My work gives them away for free because we have so many. So really this soup would just cost you a head of cabbage, vinegar and the spices.

THANKS THEY ARE

Oooh, may I join? I love food and I'm always looking for new recipes to try out. Anyways, the dish I'll show is...Caldo de Res :D
This was actually suggested to me by someone in region chat (still trying to remember who it was!) who told me they saw my name on a menu! I'd never heard of Caldo de Res before, so I decided to make it for myself.

Anyways, I followed an online recipe to make this. However, I had the ingredients list bought but couldn't find the recipe due to me resetting my browser, so it took me a while to find the recipe I had chosen. After looking through numerous recipes, none of which matched what I had bought, I realized that that the recipe I had chosen was a lot different than most others. I finally found the correct recipe, and it still turned out great c:
This is the recipe I used: Caldo de Res

(some of my images turned out sideways despite being the right way when uploaded)

I started off by preparing the beef shank and chopping all of my vegetables. I've only recently started to cook more often, so I'm not the best at chopping, but everything came out fine :)



Unlike the recipe said, I decided it would be better to let the beef cook for a while longer than the vegetables, so that it was well cooked and the vegetables didn't get soggy. My beef shank was still a bit frozen so it took a while to cook, so I had it simmer a little longer.



Once the beef had simmered for about an hour, I threw in all of the vegetables and let it cook for about another hour.



Here it is after it cooked for a while. Everything was starting to blend nicely and it was almost finished.



Finally, after a little over 2 hours, it was finished. (It was really awkward trying to take a photo with my user while my family all sat at the table waiting for me o_o)



Overall, it came out very nice. If I made it again I might try one of the other recipes that I found, but I'd recommend this :)

*Special thanks to whoever it was in region chat who told me about this ^-^

cool, what knife brand is that?

I believe it's a Wusthof. It's pretty old so I'm not sure which model.

Edit: Oops, apparently I can't use the right "u" so I'll just put a normal one in :p

ohh i guessed right omg, we're using it too, pretty much nearly the whole new set XD

Ooh, nice! And good guess lol