Pork Cracklins

[powerplantop]

I took some pork belly cut it up deep fried it and seasoned with Tonys.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkbbsVlvQrQ

[JamesB]

Those look like some fine chewin fer sure... I've always thought that cracklins were just the fried up skin...

[nbrdnck]

those look really really great.

[honu41]

Aloha... looks mighty fine but I always thought cracklins were just the skin.

joe

[Stan41]

True cracklins are leftover after rendering the lard. All the excess fat (skin & all) that was trimmed from the meat when butchering a hog. All this fat and skin was cut up into small squares, placed it in a large wash pot over a fire with about a gallon of water to keep it from scorching. When through rendering the lard the cracklins came to the top and were skimmed off. Some cracklins had skin and some didn't. Sometimes the cracklins were eaten and sometimes made into lye soap. The liquid lard was poured into lard cans and allowed to cool and solidify.
Stan41

[honu41]

Stan your description brought back memories of when I helped my mom and grandpa cater when I was much younger, as in 50 some years ago. With the skin after the lard is rendered, we let the skin drain and cool down couple of hours to room temp. Then the oil is reheated and the skin fried in the hot oil. Guaranteed puffy skin with lots of small bubbles!

joe

[Stan41]

Honu: What you were making was fried pork skins. I have done this too and they are delicious! In the old days the lard of a hog was very valuable since farm families used it to fry just about everything and also to bake pies, biscuits, etc. with. Crisco or vegetable oil was rarely used since it was expensive and it was cheap to produce your own lard. Very fat hogs were more desirable that the skinny ones like they butcher nowadays. They sometimes even used lard presses to squeeze every bit of lard they could get from the cracklings. Some cracklings were usually taken into the house, especially the ones with a little bit of lean meat on them. They were either eaten fresh or crumbled up and mixed up in cornbread batter.

After the lard was poured into lard cans all of the cracklings that were left and maybe a little bit of lard were placed back in the kettle, water was added, and two cans of lye. Then this mixture was boiled and stirred constantly with a wooden paddle until all the cracklings had dissolved. The fire was removed and the kettle allowed to cool until the next day when the contents had solidified into lye soap. The soap was cut up using a butcher knife into usable sized pieces for dishwashing, bathing, etc.

In my mind I can smell what all this proceedure smelled like even though it has been 60 years.

Stan41

[ChileFarmer]

I too grew up with cracklings, I love them. Had crackling cornbread last week. We can buy them at our local Mexican store.(Chicharrones)
Power plant, those sure look good. CF

[Surfinsapo]

Good lookin chicharones!!!