How to Make Pork Cracklings the Old Fashioned Way

Pork cracklings are crispy well-cooked pork fat, an old-fashioned treat. They are a biproduct of rendering pork fat into lard, and are often just the pork fat itself, toasted to a crunch after the lard has been rendered out of them. There is a lot of confusion between cracklings, scratchings, chicharrónes, and pork rind. I’ll share the difference between them, and why there is confusion. In this recipe, I am taking pork fat that has no skin, and has been cooked until the lard is rendered out of it. Then I am roasting the leftovers until they are crispy and delicious. This is the most economical way to use up pork fat because it creates two amazing products instead of one, and it is a simplified recipe with only one ingredient!

What are pork cracklings?

There are two definitions for cracklings. Some people differentiate them by calling one cracklins and the other cracklings, but as far as I can tell, there is an authentic, old-fashioned definition and a modernized definition based on new cooking methods, and both are entirely different.

Modern Cracklings definition:

Cracklings are now a combination of pork skin, pork meat, and pork fat. They are usually double-fried in oil or lard to allow the skin to crack and bubble. Sometimes, people will just use pork belly cut into chunks (the cut of pork that bacon comes from) and fry it into cracklings.

Old-Fashioned Pork Cracklings definition:

these are what our ancestors would make. They are simple and delicious. While nowadays people use certain cuts from the pig, old-fashioned pork cracklings are just whatever fat you are rendering. It could be the leaf fat, or it could be the fat from under any part of the pig’s skin.

What is the difference between pork cracklings and pork rinds?

Lots of recipes equate pork cracklings, chicharrónes, and pork rinds. But they each refer to a different part of the pig.

Pork rinds are typically just the pork skin with as little fat as possible. The way it is cooked minimizes the amount of fat sticking to the skin before it is fried.

This is different from both the pork cracklings definitions above, because not only is it prepared so that you couldn’t render lard from it if you wanted to, but there is no meat and little fat on the pork rinds.

How different butchering methods affects your product:

There are two places that pork fat comes from. Under the skin, and around the insides of the pig. The leaf fat, or the fat inside the pig, is best used for rendering lard. The outside skin can also be use to make lard, or it can be used to make snacks like chicharrónes, or left on the cuts of meat for more flavor. Since the pigs we have are American Guinea Hogs, which are lard pigs, we end up processing most of it into sausage or lard.

When you butcher, there are two ways to deal with the hairs on the pig. You can scrape the hair off, or you can skin the pig. If you skin the pig, there is no skin to make into pork rinds. Both processing methods have their pros and cons, and we have decided over the years that it is easiest and fastest to just skin the pigs. One of the pros are that there is less hair on the end product. While scraping the hair ideally leaves the skin hairless, we have never had the experience that the hair comes off well. So we end up with hairy fat.

Hairy fat is fine, but it adds time to the rest of the processing of the pig, and might add unpleasantness to your end product if you miss any. Skinning works much better and cleaner for us so far. Also, if there are lots of hairs on the skin, it is much harder to clean the fat to make appetizing pork cracklings. Which is why I say that I feed our chickens the cracklings in my post on how to render lard.

Can you freeze pork cracklings?

Yes! They taste just the same, although I like to fry them up a second time after they have been defrosted.

How to eat pork cracklings

• As a salad topper
• to make high-protein bread like this Keto bread.
• As a garnish anywhere that you would use crushed bacon.

I can’t resist eating it all right out of the pan, so I haven’t been very creative when it comes to what to do with pork cracklings! Also: I thought it would be delicious to add them as a soup topper, like you would bacon. Unfortunately, the soup washed the salt off of them and they lost their flavor. I will need to experiment with pre-salting the fat. However, that means I will render salted lard. I don’t know if I want to do that, we shall see.

Seasoning variations

Traditionally, cracklings are just salted. They taste like uncured bacon, and the flavor is very strong and delicious without anything added on. I think adding some cayenne pepper and garlic powder would be delicious, or tossed with parmesan cheese and oregano and garlic. But I don’t think I will ever get to the point where I lose interest in just plain old salted cracklings!

How to prepare the fat

Because we butcher our American Guinea Hogs ourselves, I have to be more or less careful about cleaning the fat depending on how we processed the pig. If we scraped the pig, I have to spend time making sure the unappetizing hairs are completely gone.

If I’m using leaf lard, I sometimes have to cut out the sinew that comes from inside the belly. It depends on how we butchered the pig though. I’m sure it’s fine to eat, but I don’t want to end up with chewy cracklings.

Why render the lard?

Maybe you just wanted a crackling recipe, and you don’t understand why this includes rendering the lard. It is because this is the old fashioned way to make cracklings. You would render the lard and eat the leftover fat. But also because lard is one of my favorite parts about raising pigs.

How do you render lard?

Lard seeps out of the pork fat chunks when you cook it, just like bacon fat does when you cook bacon. There are many methods on how to render lard, but I wrote a post about my favorite way here.

The difference between rendering lard with cracklings in mind and rendering lard without eating the cracklings:

There are two different ways I like to render lard. One has the goal of eating the cracklings in the end as part of the goal, and one is all about getting the lard and tossing the cracklings. There are two parts of the butchering process and the rendering process that differ depending on my preferences:

1. How well I clean the fat
2. How I gather the lard

I clean the fat really well when I intend to eat it. Pork fat is very sticky, and if anything is going to get dirty during the butchering process, it’s going to be the fat. Loose dirt and hair always sticks really well to the pork fat, so I spend a lot of extra time cleaning it off.

When I am rendering very large batches of lard, I like to cook all the lard at once and then drain the lard from the cracklings. It is much faster, simpler, and less intensive. Here is the method I use for that.

In this recipe, I am continuously gathering the lard from the pot so as to get as much out of the way as possible and to toast the cracklings.

What method is best for you?

The method depends on a few factors:

How much pork fat do you have?

If you are butchering your own pig and have so much lard to work through, I would suggest only saving some for cracklings. The process can get so overwhelming on top of butchering. But this depends on how much you value your cracklings. I often freeze lard if I have the space so that I can deal with it later when we have gotten over the butchering hump.

What kind of pork fat do you have?

If you have bought leaf lard from the butcher with the express intention of rendering your lard, and it is covered in sinew, it might be hard to turn it into delicious pork cracklings. However, pork fat from any other part of the pig, and even the leaf fat might be fine.

Pictured below: I had to cut the lard off the sinew on my last batch.

How to make pork cracklings the old-fashioned way.

Ingredients:

1. Pork fat
2. Salt

Equipment:

1. Flour sack towel, sieve, chenwa, or coffee filter
2. Ladle. I like my mini ladles that I bought for processing our raw milk. But you can use any old ladle or big spoon.

How to make pork cracklings step one: Source your pork fat.

As I mentioned earlier, the kind of pork fat will affect the end result. Read my post on rendering lard for more information on how to source pork fat.

How to make pork cracklings step two: Cut into small chunks for rendering.

The modern chicharrónes or pork cracklings methods all cut the pork fat into larger chunks, but if you are rendering the lard first, and want to do it the traditional way, it is best to cut the fat into small chunks.

I cut the chunks about 1/2 inch in diameter, and I like to use sharp kitchen scissors.

How to make pork cracklings step three: heat the pork fat, stirring often.

Put all the pork fat into a pot and set the heat to medium-high. You will need to keep an eye on it and keep stirring it so all of the sides of the fat cook evenly. If I need to step out of the room, I just turn the heat down and it works out fine.

How to make pork cracklings step four: ladle out the lard.

Step four A: If you want some lard that tastes less piggy, get the first lard that is rendered and put it into its own jar.

Put your flour sack towel or strainer over the mouth of your jar, and ladle the lard through the filter. Try to make sure you keep all the cracklings in the pot.

Step four B: as the fat cooks, it will start to change color to a more golden brown, and eventually a deeper brown. Ladle the lard out as it cooks.

As soon as the fat starts to change color, you will want to use a different jar if you are trying to avoid a piggy taste in the first one.

A quick note on the piggy taste: why do people avoid it?

I don’t find the piggy smell and taste of lard offensive. It smells like uncured bacon to me, and I think it adds umami and flavor to whatever I’m cooking. However, some people like to have odorless, tasteless lard for things like pies and pastries. I’ve had pie crust made with slightly piggy lard and it didn’t bother me. But it does make sense that you wouldn’t want to combine the smells of bacon and doughnuts together.

Step five: toast the fat.

At this point, most of the lard has been rendered out. Now it is time for you to gently toast the cracklings to make them as crunchy as and evenly cooked as possible. Keep the temperature low enough to not let any one side get overcooked. Everything should deepen in color at the same time.

Step six: season the fat.

I just dump more salt than I think I would want, preferably coarse kosher salt or sea salt. And then I eat it!

There are many different ideas on flavor varieties for pork cracklings, but my favorite is to just salt it the way it would have traditionally been seasoned. Otherwise, you are overpowering the true crackling flavor, and in my opinion, I don’t see the point!

Notes:

It is best to leave the cracklings to rest, but I end up snacking on them right out of the pan before they are cooled down.

How to store the cracklings:

I put them into an airtight container in the fridge, or in a freezer bag in the freezer. Either way, I prefer to re-toast the cracklings before I eat them to get the delicious crispiness all over again!

Let me know if you tried this or if you have ever tried a different method! Thanks for reading!