are you going to make straight pigs feet or the vinegar ones? I suggest half and half , make pigs feet soup Caribbean style and vinegar in your simmering water add the sliced onions, a bay leave YES go by a big container of whole Allspice i..you can crack and grind what you need and the whole berries last forever! is magical flavor
I just adore it in all broths! I even toss it with wood when I smoke

ok here is a step by step of how I would do it (I talk over myself I am sorry)

cover the pigs feet with water and bring to a boil boil about 3 min then dump rinse the feet well and put them back in the pot.

cover with water (I don't know how many feet you have but figure if you are using two quarts of water use 1/3 cup vinegar in the water)
add some bay leaf, a few allspice berries a few coriander seeds and at least one but two are better big sliced onions and a habanero (depends on how much heat you like but you have to have one to make this perfect ) poke holes in it and just drop it in the soup

put a lid on and simmer all day again until the meat and skin fall off the bone they should melt in your mouth
you could add a head of cut up cabbage at the end and use up one of those cabbages

serve in a bowl with the broth as soup
this is food of my childhood even as a kid I loved pigs feet



I am hungry Cap! I need to put the cabbage in my corned beef

As I mentioned elsewhere, I can't do vinegar. Also, unfermented cabbage gives me gas. Do you think I could do something similar with sauerkraut, using sauerkraut juice instead of vinegar?

I have 3 pigs feet, already cut up.

I saw that! and so forget the cabbage! so where ever I say vinegar just think your fermented juice of choice or use a lemon in the pigs feet and the fermented juice in the beef stock lemons go great with pigs feet!

right now I am regretting giving the cabbage core to dogs that was a HUGELY GASIOUS MISTAKE!!!! so I understand why you want to avoid unfermented cabbage

as a side note I think I mentioned elsewhere kimchi settles my stomach when I have a bug it must be the enzymes

you have six pieces of pig foot so use just enough water to cover and add about 1/3 cup fermented juice or leven better with the pig foot use the juice of a lemon or lime (later when they are cooked you can add more to taste) can you have those?

it is hard to know what people can and can not eat so please forgive me if I advise something not on your diet

most things you can find a way around in life and accomodate with a little effort, at least your have the fermented juice!


acid draws the minerals out of the bones and is a flavor enhancer it just brightens food so much I think

my husband is German and loves pigs feet with sauerkraut

just do everything I said above and then add the kraut at the end! even the habanero

No problem, I'm used to making substitutions. I'm just glad to have someone to ask about it!

We have lemons and limes right now. Do you think limes might clash with the sauerkraut?

yes if you use the lemons or limes no sauerkraut! go with yellow onions herbs and spices

if you have your own trees I am jealous

but if you do toss in a lime leaf or two

I once had a tiny Meyer Lemon that grew one lemon and suffered an agonizing aphid death

I wish! My dad had one when I was a kid and we lived in California. I've heard they grow this far north, but I've never had any experience of that. Most of our lemons come from CA, and I think the limes are from Mexico.

I was just excited because we went for about a week with no lemons in the house and that was a bit tough.

LOL I just looked at your sig and realized you were in Philadelphia of couse you can not grow lemon trees
my lemon was in a pot in the house we can not grow them out of doors (unless you move them in and out and have a sun room) either

Well, I hope I didn't ruin them. I'm thinking about fasting all day tomorrow so I wanted to use them tonight. This morning I was in a hurry and didn't have time to check a recipe, so I just tossed them in the slow cooker with a cup of red sauerkraut (with juniper berries), 6 cloves garlic, a bay leaf, some rosemary, salt, pepper and allspice berries. It looks like we're out of onions, so I hope the garlic can cover for them. Filled the crock with water and put it on the lowest setting.

Now I see you boil them first and season later.... oops! I also forgot the hot peppers - we have some dried arbol chilis I was thinking of using. I'll tell you how these came out, anyway.

Okay, well that was a learning experience. I seem to have boiled the flavor right out of the pig's feet. Maybe I needed more salt, but they were very disapointing. I'm reducing the broth now in hopes of salvaging it into a sauce to cover the blandness. I threw a chili pepper in too.

Fortunately, I have always been willing to eat my own experiments, however they come out. They're tolerable with some of the partway reduced sauce and some fresh sauerkraut. But three pig's feet is an awful lot to eat all by myself...

The pig's feet remind me of beef short ribs, another cut that I have never been able to figure out how to cook.

Next time I'll boil first, then add sauce. The sauerkraut lost everything in the crock pot - it turned into a completely tasteless substance. I think next time I'll use sauerkraut juice only, no actual cabbage.

pigs feet do not have much flavor to be honest it is all about the texture that is why I like them with lots of vinegar and hot sauce because they have very little flavor

I am sorry ou are not enjoying them

I am not sure my advice translates well to posting and rather than give advice that causes people to end up with mediocre food I am going to be really careful from now on ..

take care ...
and again I am sorry you do not like them
one thing you could do to make them more enjoyable if you want to try it is to make a form of headcheese from feet.

you can warm them up pull the meat and skin off and chop it up well them with just enough of the seasoned up broth (if it jelled) (see this is where i would add some vinegar to add flavor and tang) put it in a loaf pan press it down well with just enough broth to moisten ..chill well ..then slice and serve jelled like a lunch meat that way
cold with a dipping sauce or mustard if you can eat that

I dont know I am advice shy right now

but rest assured I dont think pigs feet have much flavor that is why curry or vinegar them

Head cheese would be really nice.

Cooking the broth down did help, and I think adding more sauerkraut juice would help too. Maybe all is not lost.

Okay! So I poured the broth over the pig's feet and put them in the fridge yesterday. When I got them out today they were actually pretty good!

I took the meat off the bones and stewed the bones a little more. Cut the meat up finely and put in the loaf pan, added a little salt, pepper, and juice from pickled daikon (that was sort of a mistake - I mistook it for sauerkraut). Poured the broth over the meat and it thickened up pretty well even at room temperature. It's chilling now.

So my question now is, can you fry head cheese like scrapple, or does it just get all runny if you warm it up?

By the way, while I was writing this I remembered that I put half the pig's feet in the freezer. So I could have had a lot more head cheese if I'd remembered that!

No you can not fry it you need the cornmeal to make it scrapple. if you fried it it would fall apart like you predicted you just have to eat it sliced cold

good luck

Thanks, HiDelight! I've been enjoying it cold. I wish I could find the camera to take a picture for you - it looks so cool - little chunks of meat suspended in dark jelly.

One more question - are you supposed to remove the skin when you make head cheese? I'm not sure if it's actually skin, but there's a tough, crunchy "rind" on the outside of the feet. It resembles the cartilage on the end of chicken bones. I chopped it up and put it in, but I think it would have been better left out or ground more finely in a meat grinder.