In Canada, when I do groceries and look for pork, usually i can only find pork chops, ground pork and ribs; whereas in China, we eat almost every part of a pig, crunchy pig ears, tender neck meat, chewy pig feet, great-for-beauty pork skin jelly... they may sound weird to you but we cook them in different ways and they are indeed very yummy. I guess it just depends on if you are used to it or not. Why waste the potential food after you've killed the pig?...
A bit off topic 
Yah, I found these pork knuckles for sale one day and bought them right away even I never cooked these before... Checked out recipes online and found this one; the dish was delicious! It was juicy, sweet and tender~ 
They are so big that one could fill up my stomach~
Ingredients
pork knuckles (I used 2), ginger slices, Chinese cooking wine (yellow wine, »Æ¾Æ), rock sugar (±ùÌÇ), light soya sauce (Éú³é), dark soya sauce (Àϳé), star anises (°Ë½Ç), spicy bean sauce (À±¶¹°ê½´), vegetable oil
NOTE:
1. For a lot of Chinese recipes, the amounts of seasonings are not defined because the same sauce from different brands may taste differently (eg. soya sauce could be more salty from this brand than the other brands), which makes Chinese cooking not easy to learn. The amounts mentioned in the recipe below are suggestiongs and reference according to my experience.)
2. Please see the Glossary for explanations of Chinese spices or seasonings.
Difficulty: ¡ï¡ï¡î¡î¡î
1. Boil water with the 2~3 ginger slices, a few tablespoons of yellow wine and couple star anises. 2. Put the clean pork knuckles in the boiling water, skim off all floating bubbles after boiled for about 5min (it's actually the blood from the knuckles, see picture on the right). Lower the heat to medium, cook for about an hour until you can stick an chopstick into the knuckle easily. Take out the knuckles and pad dry them. Save the broth. |
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3. Heat up couple tablespoon of oil and melt the rock sugar, keep an eye on the color of the sugar. The temperature gets up very fast and sugar get burned very quickly when it starts to caramelize. Put in the knuckles (surface of the knuckles has to be dry!! otherwise the splitted high temperature sugar would burn you easily!!). Turn over the knckles couple times to make sure they are well coated by the melted sugar.
4. Put in some light soya sauce and dark soya sauce. Sprinkle a bit of yellow wine to bring out more flavors.
5. Mix 1~2 tablespoons of spicy bean sauce (depends on how spicy you like) with ~1/4 cup of broth. Add the broth to the knuckles, simmer and turn knuckles over occasionally to make sure the color is uniform. The knuckles are ready when the sauce gets thick and glossy!
