Pork cheeks in the oven

1. Turn on the oven at 160 degrees Celsius.

2. Rinse pork cheeks thoroughly in cool water, dry with paper towels. Add salt to the cheeks and season with ground black pepper to taste. Pour a little flour into a bowl and roll the pork in it.

3. Pour a little olive oil into a deep frying pan (or cast-iron cauldron), heat it and fry the pork cheeks over medium heat for 8-10 minutes from different sides, turning the pork until caramel color. Then put the pork on a plate, and pour out almost all the fat that has been heated from it. Leave only a small amount.

4. Peel onions and carrots, rinse with water and dry. Cut the onion into half rings, and grate the carrots on a fine grater. The celery stalk should also be washed, dried and cut into circles. Put the chopped vegetables in a frying pan with the remains of fat from under the pork cheeks and fry them for 4-5 minutes until golden brown.

Then peel and chop the garlic. Add garlic to the pan to the fried vegetables and season them with spices: thyme and bay leaf. Warm up the spices for a couple of minutes to a characteristic aroma. Add a little salt if necessary.

Wash tomatoes and cut into slices. Then put the tomatoes in the pan and continue cooking the vegetables together for about 5 minutes.

5. Pour the sherry into a frying pan with vegetables, add chicken broth and bring it to a boil. Then put the pork cheeks back into the pan, cover the pan with a fireproof lid or a sheet of foil and remove the dishes from the heat.

6. Put a frying pan with cheeks and vegetables in a preheated oven for 3 hours.

7. After the specified time, remove the pan from the oven and remove the pork cheeks. Strain through a sieve the liquid in which the pork was cooked into a saucepan. Then put the saucepan with the sauce on the stove, bring the contents to a boil. After that, reduce the heat and boil the sauce to a thick state, stirring it periodically. The cooking time of the sauce will be about half an hour.

8. Return the pork cheeks to the resulting sauce again, cover the pan with a lid and cook over low heat for another couple of minutes. Then remove the pan from the heat.

Ready pork cheeks to serve with a side dish of potatoes or celery, pouring sauce.

Bon appetit!