Pork Scratchings the Brenchley Way

[desperance]

People do keep asking, so okay: this is how I make my scratchings.

First, obtain some pork rind. This is probably the hardest part of the process. My own local supermarket (Morrisons, for those of you in the UK) happens to sell it, in among the joints, for extra crackling; I buy it when I see it, and freeze it against a need.

The only ingredient else is a herby salt. I mix granular sea salt with herbes de Provence or erbe di Siena; Lakeland sells a pre-mix called "Good With Everything", which is also good.

Now you need a sharp kitchen knife (sharp, please) and a baking tray.

Light your oven and let it warm. Meanwhile, lay out your slab of pork rind rind-side down, and rub your herby salt into the fatty side. If the salt's at all fine, be abstemious; I'm quite generous, but the salt I use is like hailstones, and half of it goes pinging off in the process.

Now roll up your slab of rind with the herby fatty side on the inside, and slice it into fingers (I did ask for a sharp knife, remember? But it's actually easier to cut through in a roll).

Now lay your fingers of rind on the baking sheet, fatty side down, rind side up. Turn the oven to the lowest possible setting - really truly - and slide the tray in on the bottom shelf.

Close the oven door, and leave it.

Stay away.

Do all this in the morning, and leave it till the evening. Eight hours is certainly not too long.

You will find that some of the fat renders out (yay! it's healthy!); you can drain that off at this point.

Now turn the oven up to middling-hot - gas mark 5 or 6 - and put the tray back in at the top of the oven.

Now you have to keep an eye on it, because over the next twenty minutes or half an hour, that pork is going to scratch.

There are three stages to this, and only two are desirable.

First, your dried-out but still floppy fingers are going to turn stiff and crunchy. This is good.

Second, they are going to pop like popcorn, turning light and crunchy and lacy inside. This is better.

Third, they are going to burn. This is not good at all.

The trick, obviously, is to catch them between stages two and three. You have perhaps five minutes.

They'll probably curl up; they may go three-dimensional. Catch them while they're still golden-brown, before they go black - but try not to be pre-emptive, don't lose your nerve and take them out before they've popped. That way lie broken teeth, as you discover bits that are still leather at heart.

Any questions?

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Any questions?

Yes: when's the next flight so I can come have some pork scratchings? OM NOM NOM!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I b'lieve there are flights from Dublin to N'cle. You can be met at the airport. There is a futon; there are cats who will bite you - om nom nom - but only in fun. Om purr nom purr snuggle.

Or there's P'con next year. I could bring scratchings. If it's legal. Conveying pork products across state borders for thoroughly immoral purposes...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there's a couple of comics shops in town, where you could promote "Take A Chance" - it's a business trip! Nothing at all to do with om-nom-noms, Mr Taxman, honest!

And we could go down to Sunderland and see Bryan Talbot, and...

*tempts*

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Signed Comicky-booky Goodness! (Can I add my encouragement to come over here?)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I'd genuinely love to. :)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Actually, with how Irish tax laws work, it's not a write-off for me to go do business anywhere. Which doesn't, mind you, make it any less a good idea... :)

Here's the important question: have you *ordered* Chance so your local comic shops might be *getting* it? :)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's a very fine point; I have not done that thing. I will go into the shop-of-choice and do that very thing.

Do I need to be able to tell them who's publishing it, or which distributor is handling it? Or will "C E Murphy's Take A Chance" be enough? (I don't order comics as a rule, so I don't know how the process differs from books.)

(Of course, it's also possible-to-highly-likely that samarcand above has already done this, in at least one of the shops; I'll check that too, and if so I'll go to the other one...)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

The most important bit you need is the Diamond order code for issue #1, but the whole kit and kaboodle is title "Take A Chance", author C.E. Murphy, and publishers are the Dabel Brothers. It's actually fairly important to do this ahead of time, because unlike a comic by Marvel or DC, many comic shops won't automatically order copies of Chance because it's from an independent press. And if you have them create a pull box (they will know what this means even if you don't, unless English comic shops are totally alien) they should automatically continue to order it for you so you can pop in and pick it up monthly without worrying about missing it.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

er. Shit. The order code which I mentioned as important and then failed to actually, you know, *include*, is OCT08 4065F. :)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

they should automatically continue to order it for you so you can pop in and pick it up monthly without worrying about missing it.

...she implied, subtly...

*sniggers*

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I'm just being *helpful*. :)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Actually, with how Irish tax laws work, it's not a write-off for me to go do business anywhere.

I was going to cry "Boo!" to that - only then I remembered that writers have, or used to have, tax-free status in Ireland. Or so I have grown up believing. Is it true? Or still true? Or was it never so?

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

It is true. They changed the law a couple years ago so it's only tax-free up to 250K euro a year, but y'know, if I ever should be so lucky as to make that much I'll be VERY HAPPY to pay my taxes on the rest of it.

(Either that or I'll incorporate in the Netherlands, where they do not tax any money made on royalties, and since literally every penny I make is from royalties... :))

Mind you, the whole tax-free thing makes significantly more difference when the dollar is at 1.26 (which is about where I start breaking even on living here vs in the states) against the euro than at 1.60, which is where it's been most of the time I've been *living* here....

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I can't remember the last time I regretted that I really don't like the taste of dead pig, these things sounds wonderful except for that minor inconvenience. Bugger.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

This phrasing begs the question, do you like the taste of *live* pig? but there seems to be something so inherently gauche about that that it shouldn't be asked at all, so you can assume this comment was never written. Or something. :)

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I'd never actually thought of that implication. I'm now trying to decide whether or not I should try it.

I think on balance ... not. And be glad that the wild boar which used to be wandering around one of the park type places not so far from here seem to be no longer there. I have a feeling that that particular experiment may have gone somewhat ill.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hee. "Just stand still, little piggy, while I..." No. Not good for om-nom-nomming, your live boar.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Mmm. There is really no way around that, alas; they are irredeemably porcine in nature, and in flavour too. And if pork rinds are hard to find, other-animal rinds are I think impossible...

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suspected as much. I shall have to enjoy them vicariously via your words. I'm used to it - I don't like bacon at all either, which makes people look at me somewhat oddly as times. (I mean, I know Jewish people who eat bacon butties for goodness sake!)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

In fact, they say bacon is the #1 food that pulls vegetarians off the vegetarian wagon. I don't know if it's true, but it's pretty *believable*... :) (At least, to people who aren't you, I guess. :))

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I totally believe it - my long-term-veggie other half loves fake/veggie bacon. For me a bacon buttie was one of the final clinchers to making me decide to try being vegetarian. I was veggie for about 10 years, I came back to the meaty side for Chinese and Indian food, neither of which I much like in their veggie incarnations (if you can even find Chinese veggie food).

Yes, I am weird.

[mroctober.livejournal.com]

Being Jewish and American I'm perplexed by the bacon butty.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Have you tried one, or are you true to your roots: is this perplexia-in-absentia? (A phrase I have just invented for the purpose, but which I think I shall hang on to...)

[mroctober.livejournal.com]

Well, I know what bacon is but I've never heard of a bacon butty.

As a youth, my family kept kosher. We were friends with a nice Orthodox family, who inspired us. But then, we all began to miss things like bacon and shrimp and crabmeat. Our culinary devotion only lasted 5 years.

[julesjones]

One of the things I miss about Silicon Valley is the Chinese supermarket about ten minutes' walk away, which amongst other things sold pork rind more or less by the yard (or so it seemed each time I got the tray home and unfolded the contents thereof). I tended to use a pair of heavy (and high quality) kitchen shears to cut the stuff into strips.

However, I just grilled mine. At some point I should locate the Manchester branch of Wing Yip and try your method.

[dedbutdrmng.livejournal.com]

My local butcher always has rind (the famed 'sheet of pig nipples' incident that appalled so many of my friends originated there). Now I must try this recipe, I really want to call off today's adventures and fire up the oven. But I will be in trouble if I do.

[anef.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think I will avoid this recipe for the sake of my figure. But if you ever happened to bring any to a convention....

When I'm rendering down duck or chicken fat there are sometimes little bits of skin that burble away in the fat and gradually get lacier and scrunchier. I do admit to sprinkling them with salt at the end of the process and eating them.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup. Favourite bits. I have been known deliberately to crisp up discarded chicken-skin the same way: chicken scratchings.

Also, figure schmigure: I live off these things and other shockin' habits, and I'm a fine slim figure of a man. They're healthy, I tell you...

I will try to remember to bring scratchings to cons. Stop me and try one.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

You fascinate me: never would I have thought this particular object could sound good. I've never had pork scratchings because they look so vile in packages at the store.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Store-bought scratchings are inevitably a disappointment after the real thing, tho' I will admit to having eaten them in the days of my ignorance before: young male pub activity, what can I say? They intrigued me, to the point of wanting to make my own and above all make them nicer, because they so obviously should be nice and just weren't, quite. There's something universally wrong with the commercial versions: partly additives and partly process, I think. They're way over-salty, with unpleasant back flavours on top, and the texture's wrong. You really could break a tooth on some commercial scratchings. Mine? Melt in the mouth. If you can keep them there that long.

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

The commercial ones you get in the US aren't hard or chewy. They're like. . .um. . . dried pork meringue in texture. They come in either kill you dead salty flavor or kill you dead salty flavor with strange extra flavors. Chili. Lime. BBQ.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that. All oddly latticed, so they break down fast like a meringue, but they taste of salt and vileness. The texture certainly is wrong! I haven't tried any in the U.K., preferring crisps with my beer. Your description sounds like jerky, either leathery-tough or intensely chewy.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Latticed, to be sure: an open crispy texture is desirable. A degree of saltiness also, but vileness? Never.

Leatheriness and chewiness, jerkyness of any kind is undesirable, but I have known this in commercial preparations; also in my own trial-and-error discovery process. File under "error".

Any Questions?

[poesmother.livejournal.com]

Do you sell them in handy snack sized packages?