In today's food blogger's series I will show how to prepare a really tasty and delicious homemade aspic out of pig's trotters.
I'm not sure how popular an aspic is in the Western world, but it is a super popular in post Soviet countries, and is served in every fiests. Russian have a name for it - a kholodets (Холодец).According to Wikipedia - Aspic is a dish in which ingredients are set into a gelatin made from a meat stock or consommé. Non-savory dishes, often made with commercial gelatin mixes without stock or consommé, are usually called gelatin salads. Nearly any type of meat can be used to make the gelatin: pork, beef, veal, chicken, turkey, or fish. The aspic may need additional gelatin in order to set properly. Veal stock provides a great deal of gelatin; in making stock, veal is often included with other meat for that reason. Fish consommés usually have too little natural gelatin, so the fish stock may be double-cooked or supplemented. Since fish gelatin melts at a lower temperature than gelatins of other meats, fish aspic is more delicate and melts more readily in the mouth.
In today's post I will show how to make an aspic from pig trotters.
Ingredients you will need - a few pig's trotters for meat, you can get some at your local market or shop, and gelatin. A gelatin is a super cool ingredient every food blogger should have in their arsenal, you can make a super cool jelly's with help of it.
The process for preparing an aspic is really simple - first boil pig trotter's as long as the meat is soft enough it's easy to remove meat from trotter's skin, give it a time to cool down, then start removing meat (take only meat, no need for skin, thus some adds skin to aspic as well)
Use your hands to slice meat in smaller pieces and place it in container
Place meat in plastic containers
It really doesn't matter what container you are using, it can be glass ofcourse, or it can be container with some texture on it, making more appealing visuals at the end.
Cover meat with gelatin
Now for this aspic we used a fabricated gelatin.
Put aspic in fridge or in cool place and leave it like for a night (or at least a few hours) next day you will have a really firm and tasty aspic.
Homemade aspic (meat jelly)
I hope you enjoyed this simple aspic recipe, please make sure you subscribe to my monthly newsletter (sing up bellow) and don't forget to leave a comment.