smoked ham hocks

It is a nice fall day and I want to take Mini out for a short drive. I also want to check out a ODB reader which concerns me as it has a burnt component that I can see through the translucent case. I cannot open it as it would be viewed as I had tempered with it.

I stopped by the local Japanese (an Asian supermarket with a Japanese till) supermarket Uwajimaya for no good reason. I haven't been there for months. I've always like to observe how a business evolve over time in respond to demographic, economic, neighborhood, and political influences. I walked through a few isles and noted the changes of the merchandises. As always some good and some not so good. Just to give some ideas of what I observed, I checked out a few products that give the impression they are Japanese.

I briefly checked out the isle of instant ramen noodles. I only need to look at the ones of higher price points with lots of Japanese texts, as the lower price ones are the usual suspect form China, Thailand, or Vietnam. Japanese one would be most expensive, and Korean next. It turns out I could not find one that is from Japan.

I did find some frozen udon that is made in Japan. Typically the made in Japan products tends to be all Japanese on the product packaging especially at the back side - suggesting they are intended for domestic consumption, while export to the West is an afterthought. I bought the udon for serving with my braised beef shanks.

What I also happy to see is they now have a good selection of Japanese pickled vegetable that are made in Japan, instead of those packaged to look like Japanese but are made in China, Taiwan etc.

What I next came upon has to be the best deal in the entire store - smoked ham hocks for just $2.49/lb. I had tried to smoke my own once and failed miserably. This is one of those things that it is not worth your trouble unless you are going to make a huge batch. I know Carlton Farms supplies all the raw pork to the best real German deli in town. These are the company's own smoked ham hock which is very unusual for a raw meat pig farm. I bought a pack of two to snack.

The ham hocks is as good as the German deli though not the jumbo size the deli sells. I snacked on one and thought to myself, this is cheaper than a small hamburger at McDonald's.

they had been previously frozen - which is very common nowadays with packaged cooked food

a delicious snack that requires a sharp knife

One biggest challenge of making smoked ham hocks is to achieve proper seasoning (that is salting). When I tried my hands the meat inside just does not get the seasoning despite of being soaked in salt solution for days. I think the technique is to inject salt solution (and may be also liquid smoke) with a purpose made meat syringe.