Spring is in full swing now, and people
are starting to shed their Winter gear and they’re enjoying their travels
again. We tend to come out of our hotel
rooms a bit more often to explore the cities we’re visiting. I’ve always encouraged people to take at
least one afternoon away from your business ventures to do a local “Walkabout”
to meet a few local people, and to sample the local fare, food, and fauna. Awhile ago, I decided that it would be fun to
start a weekly series about regional foods!
As you move around the country, step out of your comfort zone once in
awhile and try a local dish! Some may
not be so good, but as you’ll see over the coming weeks, some of them can be so
fantastic that you’ll find yourself ordering your own private stock off of the
internet.
Today’s regional food favorite is…. Pork
Cracklins!
I love “The Iron Chef” show on the Food
Network. Their budget is so ridiculous
on that show, that I wouldn’t be surprised if they were to stuff a Kobe Beef
tenderloin with caviar and white truffles, wrap it in pate and fois gras,
marinate it in Louis XV cognac, then deep fry it, just to see what it would
taste like. I can’t imagine a meal that
would cost $200 per fork full, but that show could make it happen! The other night, I was watching Iron Chef
Michael Symon as he was working with a giant block of Prosciutto. He was slicing long thick strands of pork fat
off of it. I thought sure that he was
going to discard the fat, but then he trimmed the strips into uniform lengths
and through them into the deep fat fryer… Are you kidding me?
He wasn’t kidding, he was making
“cracklins!” Down south, especially
around the Mississippi Delta, you’ll find pork cracklins. I’m sure you’ve heard of pork rinds, but
cracklins are different. A good
crackling starts out as a two inch square (or strip) of pork skin and fat, with
some meat mixed in. A slap of pork belly
or raw and uncured bacon would work perfectly for this application. You drop your slabs into a cast iron pot that
has some oil in it, and you cook them for about thirty minutes.
The delicious irony of pork cracklins is
that you’re actually rendering most of the fat out of the snack as you cook
it! I mean, here you are basically deep
fat frying some pig fat, and when you pull the cracklin out of the grease, it
weights ? of what it did when you dropped it in there! After you cook a batch of cracklins, your pot
will have an additional 4 inches of grease/oil in it. You’ll have to pour off and store the excess
before you start another batch.
I tried some that were heavily spiced
with cayenne pepper and I was in love.
Living in Minnesota, I can’t find them anywhere for purchase, so I
thought I’d make my own. I changed my
mind though, after seeing this warning on one recipe:
Caution, we don’t recommend cooking
cracklins inside your home.
- It'll heat up your
kitchen something awful.
- It makes a terrible
greasy mess, that coats everything in the room.
- Your house will
smell like pork cracklins for months.
- You might burn down your house.
Now, I can’t imagine sampling some
cracklins made from fine Italian aged (12 years) prosciutto (I’ll leave that to
the Iron Chef) but I’ve had me some cracklins, and they’re fine eats,
indeed! If you’re looking for a salty,
crunchy snack, grab hold of a batch and you’ll love them, I promise!
EXTRA: If you have questions for Ken regarding business travel,
hotels, airplanes, etc, please send him a “Tweet” on his twitter account.
You can also follow Ken on Twitter @foodbreeze!
