Pork scratchings

[desperance]

Oh, look, it's a bank holiday. What else am I going to do? Of course I watched "The Sound of Music" this afternoon; of course (because I was alone, except for Barry) I sang along; of course I made pork scratchings.

Oh, all right, that last doesn't entirely follow. I did that because I could, and because I wanted to: because I like something to crunch with the wine while I'm working, and because I have a source for the rinds, and because I have the technique and it's a shame to waste it.

And because technique is ever-interesting, I scratched (we call it that) in experimental fashion: were they better cooked rind-side up or fat-side up, or on their sides? Made straight, or allowed to curl? Like that.

The answers are, I find, that it doesn't make a blind bit of difference, so long as you have the technique.

This is how to do it, then: cut your pork skin into strips, a centimetre wide or thereabouts. Be sure they're dry, then scatter them with salt. After half an hour, wipe off the salt - and any moisture it's drawn out - with paper towels, and lay them on a baking tray. Slip 'em into the bottom of a very slow oven, and leave 'em for three, four hours, till they are darkly transparent (like the albumen of a thousand-year egg, more or less). Then knock the heat up to medium and give them another hour, hour and a half, till utterly crisp and not at all chewy. Then tip them out onto a plate, scatter with salt (I use a herby salt, with aromatics - rosemary, juniper, like that) and let cool for five minutes to increase the crispiness yet further.

That is all. Go crunch, enjoy. I would say 'store in an airtight container', but that's meaningless; you won't have made enough to bother keeping any.

Comments

[julesjones]

Hmm. I usually just buy a pack of pork skin from the Chinese supermarket, score it, and grill it. I may have to try this way when I do the duck confit this week, since the oven's going to be on slow all afternoon anyway.

(The second pack of duck fat turned up in the back of the freezer yesterday. Thus, duck confit.)

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Oh drool!

Puts to shame the shop-made stuff I bought on Friday.

So next time I do a pork joint, should I take the skin off first and try to make scratchings separately, rather than leaving it on the joint and vaguely hoping it will turn crunchy?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ah, now - what I do when there's a joint in question, I leave it on the joint (so long as it's nowhere near any liquid - if it gets wet it turns to shoe-leather, beyond recovery) until the joint comes out to rest, then I take the skin off and slam the oven up to high, move the shelf up high and put the skin back in on its own for that last twenty minutes or so. That usually does the trick...

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

I'm reliable informed that the BBC edited 'The Sound of Music' (I was decorating at the time) Is nothing sacred?