If you’re a fan of salted pigtails to enhance your stews and soups as is common in the Caribbean, may I suggest you give smoked salted pigtails a chance. As I did in making the Breadfruit Simmered In Coconut Milk, having smoked pigtail pieces adds a unique dept of flavor.
You’ll Need…
4 lbs salted pigtail
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
8 allspice berries
2 bay leaves
Notes! May I recommend that you follow along with the video below as much more about the recipe is discussed there. Including uses for this smoked pigtails. If making this dish gluten free, please go through the full list of ingredients to ensure they meet your specific gluten free dietary requirements.
Place the salted pigtail pieces in a deep pot covered with water on a medium/high flame and add the other ingredients.
Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for one hour.
Drain and set aside. This will not only help tenderize them, it will remove most of the salt it was cured in.
I used my Traeger pellet smoker with applewood pellets. You may use an offset smoker, propane or charcoal bbq if you wish. For the propane and charcoal bbq you’ll need to grill indirectly and employ the use of smoke pouches (essentially wood chips wrapped with foil, with tiny holes so when the wood chips burn, the smoke will escape and flavor the pigtail pieces)
My Traeger smoker was set to 180 F for the duration of the cook.
Four hours later and I pulled them off the smoker, but you can go a couple hours more should you want a more pronounced flavor.
Should you want to have these go for another couple hours, then slap some BBQ sauce on them, you could easily enjoy them as a dish after (cut into small pieces) as explained in the video.
In my case, after they were cool I placed a couple pieces into individual vacuum bags and stored them in the freezer for use in later recipes. Your stews, soups and even braised cabbage with pieces of this applewood smoked pigtail, will be simply incredible.
