Pork Knuckle in Sweetened Black Vinegar with Ginger (猪脚姜醋)

This is one of my favourite dishes, even not in confinement. I would have this pork in sweet vinegar dish once in awhile when I have craving for it.

It is especially important, to be taken after child-birth as it claimed to help in warming the new mother’s stomach, shrinking uterus, tonifying inner energy – ‘Qi’, promoting blood circulation, and much more!

Ingredients
1 whole pork knuckle, chopped into chunks

800 gram of old ginger, peeled and lightly mashed
1 litre of sweetened black rice vinegar aka sweet vinegar (甜醋)
1/2 bowl of black bean (黑豆)

2 blocks of palm sugar aka Gula Melaka (each about 3″ in length)

Optional:
4-5 eggs, hard boiled and shelled

Method
1) Boil sweet vinegar, ginger and black bean in a large claypot and boil over high heat till bubbling. Then, add palm sugar. Reduce heat to low fire to simmer till it releases aroma.

2) Heat off and leave it to cool overnight. Need not to store in refrigerator.

3) Re-heat the vinegar soup over medium fire. Add in pork knuckle, and continue cooking till pork meat soften, about 30 minutes. Cover claypot with its lid.

To add the hard-boiled eggs, simply add the eggs at the last 10 minutes of the cooking process. Heat off and serve with steamed plain rice.

1 portion of black vinegar pork knuckle (taken with its soup) plus 1 hard boil egg counts about 620 kcal. To reduce calorie and fat intake, you may use pork fillet or any part of lean meat to replace pork knuckle.

Tips:
* Best using Bentong ginger (文冬姜)
* The amount of the ingredients e.g sweet vinegar and palm sugar, can be adjusted according to personal liking. Keep tasting it during the cooking process to obtain the best suitable flavour.