Category Food

I used to always consider the pork skin left over after cutting meat to be waste. Either I threw it away or took it to the village for the dog.

As it turned out, in vain – it turns out that from it you can make a very tasty thing – chicharron.

These are such crispy, airy chips, very popular in Spain and Latin America.

In different countries, the preparation of chicharron varies: somewhere they fry the skin with lard or even with meat, sometimes they are even just made of meat, and not necessarily pork.

I, on the other hand, will try to make this snack from ordinary pork skin, according to the simplest recipe I found on the web.

Recently, I was making homemade pork stew and there was a skin left over. That’s what I will use.

Step 1

The skin must be thoroughly cleaned of any dirt, if necessary, you can even scrape with a knife, and try to cut off all the fat.

Then rinse under running water and cut into squares of about 2 x 2 cm.

Step 2

Now the pieces of skin need to be dried. To do it, we lay them out on a baking tray, with the lard side down, and send it to the oven heated to 150 degrees for 1,5-2 hours.

The pieces of skin have become hard, it means they are ready. But it is too early to eat them, and it will not work, you can break your teeth on them.

Step 3

Now you have to deep-fry them.

I fried the skin in a regular pan of stainless steel, added a little oil – the level of two centimeters is enough, anyway the skin immediately becomes airy and floats to the surface.

I don’t need to throw a big portion at once, five pieces will be enough, since the chicharron is cooked very quickly, in 15 to 20 seconds.

It turns out really delicious – with mustard and horseradish it goes great.

You can spice them up to your own taste, in my opinion, dried garlic and paprika work great here. You can eat them as ordinary chips, or you can even use them as a beer snack.

As it turned out, the pork skin does not absorb oil in the frying at all, the chips turned out almost dry and very airy.

There are a couple of nuances that I noticed while cooking: first of all, as I wrote earlier, spices must be added to a ready snack, the salt is better before drying.

Tips

1. If you’re looking to make a delicious dish of chicharron, you might be wondering how long it takes to cook this popular dish. The answer, of course, depends on a few factors, but in general, you can expect to spend between 30 and 45 minutes cooking chicharron.
2. One of the most important factors in determining cook time is the size of the chicharron pieces. If you’re using large pieces of chicharron, you’ll need to cook them for longer than if you’re using smaller pieces. Another factor to consider is whether or not you’re pre-cooking the chicharron. If you choose to pre-cook the chicharron, you’ll need to add additional cook time to the overall dish.
3. I made a small mistake – I added the spices right away. After frying in hot oil, I did not taste any spices. At this stage, it is better to simply salt the skin, and add spices to taste to the ready appetizer.
4. I used skin from different parts of the carcass, from the back and stomach. On the back of the skin is thicker and the chips are more airy and larger in size, from the skin off the belly, the chips are not as airy and more solid. It is better to use the skin from the dorsal part.