Fun:Pork scratchings

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A bowl of delicious pork scratchings
Pork scratchings (or pork rinds) are the cooked skin of a pig, usually with added salt to make them crunchy. They are a commercial development of the crackling found on traditional roast pork. It is generally accepted that the snack variety originated in the Black Country, an industrial area of the English West Midlands.

[edit] Pork rind snacks

Historically pork scratchings have been prepared from pieces of pig skin (usually belly which has a large amount of fat) and may also have attached hair or flesh. Deep frying in hot fat causes the water to be expelled and the rinds become puffed and crispy. Modern food technology has introduced microwavable varieties which may be cooked at home and eaten warm. Their popularity was revived recently through the Atkins Diet suggesting them as a high-fat low-carb snack.

In the United Kingdom pork scratchings are a traditional pub snack. However, owing to the attached layer of skin they may be very hard and are regarded as unsuitable for children, people with weak teeth such as the elderly, or denture wearers.

Other names for them are chicharrones (Spanish; also used for a similar chicken snack in the Spanish Caribbean), grattons (French), or scrunchions (Newfoundland). In the Netherlands pork scratchings are known as knabbelspek but are not widely available as pork skin is considered only fit for dogs.

A packet of knabbelbacon from Albert Heijn

An alternative snack version with less skin is also available. These tend to be much lighter than traditional scratchings and may be suitable for children. In the Netherlands these are known as knabbelbacon (bacon nibbles).

In the USA pork rinds are generally seen as a low-status crude food for working class people which owing to their high salt and fat content are regarded as unhealthy. Former President George H. W. Bush stated that pork rinds were his favorite vegetable snack [1] and they replaced Ronald Reagan's jelly beans on Airforce One.

[edit] Crackling

In Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management the following entry is given for pork crackling:

HOW ROAST PIG WAS DISCOVERED. — Charles Lamb, who, in the early part of this century, delighted the reading public by his quaint prose sketches, written under the title of "Essays of Elia," has, in his own quiet humorous way, devoted one paper to the subject of Roast Pig, and more especially to that luxurious and toothsome dainty known as "CRACKLING;" and shows, in a manner peculiarly his own, how crackling first came into the world.
According to this erudite authority, man in the golden age, or at all events the primitive age, eat his pork and bacon raw, as, indeed, he did his beef and mutton; unless, as Hudibras tells us, he was an epicure, when he used to make a saddle of his saddle of mutton, and after spreading it on his horse's back, and riding on it for a few hours till thoroughly warmed, he sat down to the luxury of a dish cooked to a turn. At the epoch of the story, however, a citizen of some Scythian community had the misfortune to have his hut, or that portion of it containing his live stock of pigs, burnt down. In going over the débris on the following day, and picking out all the available salvage, the proprietor touched something unusually or unexpectedly hot, which caused him to shake his hand with great energy, and clap the tips of his suffering fingers to his mouth. The act was simple and natural, but the result was wonderful. He rolled his eyes in ecstatic pleasure, his frame distended, and, conscious of a celestial odour, his nostrils widened, and, while drawing in deep inspirations of the ravishing perfume, he sucked his fingers with a gusto he had never, in his most hungry moments, conceived. Clearing away the rubbish from beneath him, he at last brought to view the carcase of one of his pigs, roasted to death. Stooping down to examine this curious object, and touching its body, a fragment of the burnt skin was detached, which, with a sort of superstitious dread, he at length, and in a spirit of philosophical inquiry, put into his mouth. Ye gods! the felicity he then enjoyed, no pen can chronicle! Then it was that he — the world — first tasted crackling. Like a miser with his gold, the Scythian hid his treasure from the prying eyes of the world, and feasted, in secret, more sumptuously than the gods. When he had eaten up all his pig, the poor man fell into a melancholy; he refused the most tempting steak, though cooked on the horse's back, and turned every half-hour after his own favourite recipe; he fell, in fact, from his appetite, and was reduced to a shadow, till, unable longer to endure the torments of memory he hourly suffered, he rose one night and secretly set fire to his hut, and once more was restored to flesh and manhood. Finding it impossible to live in future without roast-pig, he set fire to his house every time his larder became empty; till at last his neighbours, scandalized by the frequency of these incendiary acts, brought his conduct before the supreme council of the nation. To avert the penalty that awaited him, he brought his judges to the smouldering ruins, and discovering the secret, invited them to eat; which having done, with tears of gratitude, the august synod embraced him, and, with an overflowing feeling of ecstasy, dedicated a statue to the memory of the man who first instituted roast pork.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. http://www.usatrivia.com/biobush.html
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