In his Roadfood.com review of the over-century-old Karl Ratzsch’s of Milwaukee, Michael Stern describes the famed Crackling Pork Shank (pictured above) as follows: “At first, we were a little scared by our Crackling Pork Shank, a gigantic hunk of hock that arrives with a sharp knife plunged into it. While the knife was indeed handy for sawing through the extremely crackly parts of the skin on the outside, we found fingers were well-suited for pulling large nuggets of moist meat from the interior as well as strips of crisp cracklin's from the drier parts. This is a vast eating adventure! The shank is accompanied by four-star sauerkraut, brown gravy, sharp mustard, and boiled red potatoes.”

In their You Asked For It feature, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel responded to readers requests for the shank recipe, and also the recipe for Karl Ratzsch’s split pea soup with ham, by contacting Karl Ratzsch’s.  Their executive chef and co-owner, John Poulos, gave the two recipes to the Journal Sentinel.  How do they achieve the super-brittle crust?  The shank is poached in hot oil for a couple of hours, and then crisped up for a few minutes by deep-frying!  No wonder it tastes so good!  See the story for these two ideal cold-weather recipes.