Not in ketosis .... Pork rinds

#21

Oh I will try that :slight_smile: I never made pork rinds, only scratchings. We don’t make pork rinds here and our stuff isn’t even crunchy. (Mine is as I prefer crunch.)
We always include the fat tissue and sometimes some meat too (that’s my fav) and it’s super fatty, fattier than fat tissue as it loses water. Fat too as scratching is the byproduct of lard making but still, databases say it’s a tad fattier than raw fat tissue. It oozes fat when one bites into it, it’s crispy but soft too… Quite lovely. Mine is meaty and crunchy and I don’t use skin at all. Skin goes to my meatballs, making them quite great. My pork belly comes without skin but with bones and I make soup with the meaty bone… One is defrosting in my fridge right now :slight_smile:

It’s so, so good, I could eat it every day but

  1. I need weeks to use up the lard
  2. it’s super fatty and I need to eat as lean as I can and then a bit less…
    But I LOVE it. And my SO doesn’t :smiley: All is MINE…
    It’s quite crunchy, it can’t reach the level of skin but still perfect for me :wink: I love the normal Hungarian non-crunchy scratchings too… I just need the fat to become crispy in the outside…
(Geoffrey) #22

What we do hare in the south, (American that is) we make what is called cracklins. It’s a Cajun thang.
We take the pork belly and slice it up into one inch by two inch strips, give or take and then slow simmer the strips and about 200° until the fat is rendered out. This is labor intensive because it needs to be stirred often and can take several hours.
Once the pork belly is rendered it’s removed from the remaining lard and set aside to cool.
The lard is then heated back up to 400° and then the pork bellies are added back to the hot lard in small batches to deep fry. They will ride add puff up or “pop” as we like to say. It doesn’t take but a few minutes for them to cook and when the look done and finished popping, take them out and place on a cooling rack and season immediately.
Some will come out a little chewy and some may get a little hard but most come out with a nice crunch.
Cracklins!

(KM) #23

Huh. I don’t like them fluffy! I’m always delighted when I find one that’s actual skin that wants to break a tooth, and still has a rind of fat on the underside. The way my mom would do a pork roast back in the day. A Danish thing, I think.

#24

I don’t have tooth for hard skin but I prefer my things fluffy anyway. Crispy, crunchy but not hard :slight_smile:
I am not exactly compatible with Hungarian scratchings, they are too soft and fatty. And not meaty enough. They are still wonderful in their own category but I prefer my own.

Due to my preferences, I never make a pork roast with skin. Except if the pig is very young. Once I bought and roasted a very small piglet (traditional food for New Year’s Eve, not like I ever made it except that one time), it had the crunchiest but still not hard due to the thinness skin ever. Great meat and lard too, it just was insanely fatty. I didn’t know piglets can be that fatty (the fact my SO only ate the meat and probably the skin so my share was way fattier didn’t help), shouldn’t they grow first? Fat helps with the cold though and it was winter… But it was amazing. I keep going down to memory lane now and then when it’s relevant or just get remembered…

(Jane) #25

I bought a whole pork belly slab to make my own bacon. I cut it into thirds to make it more manageable and vacuum sealed. I cut of a small strip from one and planned to make burnt ends, but I think I will try your method of making pork rinds and pork.

When you say oven on high - what temp is that?

(Alec) #26

I use 220C/430F.

(Polly) #27

If you are in the UK try Awfully Posh pork crackling. Only contains pork and salt and they are fried in lard (pork fat).

(Bob M) #28

This is the best pork belly recipe I’ve had:

I’ve used it just for pork fat (with skin) too.

Note: I don’t add vegetable oil if there’s not enough oil. I have frozen lard I use instead.