Crackling…. it’s one of the best, if not the BEST thing about pork, I mean what’s not to love about crispy crunchy pig skin combined with that layer of fat that just melts in your mouth. So many people ask me how to do it and how come I find it so easy. So I thought I’d share with you my method. This is how my dad has always done it, he used to be in charge of the crackling at Christmas until I took over, and I grew up thinking his was the best in the world.

 

What You’ll Need

– Pork with the skin on

– Coarse salt – I use either rock salt or salt flakes

– Oil

1. First, heat the oven. Crackling needs heat and lots of it, I turn my oven up to 250°c to pre-heat while I’m prepping the pork.

2. Rub the pork and skin dry with a paper towel, getting as much moisture as possible off. Crackling does not like moisture, so the drier you get it the better.

3. Score the skin with a sharp knife – making sure that you only go through the skin and not all the way down to the meat. You want the layer of fat to keep the meat juicy and tender. Sounds a bit tricky but it’s not, once you start scoring you’ll know what I mean.                                              – I’ve gone through a bit too far in a couple of places here, you’ll see what happens further on.

4. Rub a generous amount of salt into the skin, making sure that it gets inbetween the the scored skin. I drizzle some oil over it as well, this makes it easier to get the salt into the cracks.

5. Place pork on a roasting rack and put in in the oven. Keep the temperature on high until the crackling starts to get going and then you can turn the heat down to your preferred roasting temperature. It should look something like this…

Notice that I’ve cut a bit too deep in a couple of places – this is what I meant when explaining how to score the top.

6. Now you can turn the oven down to your preferred cooking temperature, the crackling will keep going until your meat is ready.

The end product should look something like this.

 

7. Resting the meat – DON’T cover the meat. I can’t stress this enough. The steam created from completely covering the meat will undo all your hard work and make the crackling soggy. If you must, wrap the meat from the bottom, around the sides but leave the top un-covered.

Troubleshooting

Not ready at the same time as the meat. 

• Turn the heat up again for the last 10 or so minutes of the cook to finish it off
• Cut the crackling off the meat and place under the grill, this is a sure fire way to get it finished.

Too salty.

• This is why I use coarse or rock salt, you can brush it off easier once the crackling has started.

Came out of the oven done, but went chewy/soft.

• Has come in contact with moisture, try one of the methods above to crisp it back up.

 

So that’s it, my almost failproof method of doing crackling. so what are you waiting for? Go get some pork and get crackling.

 

Until next time x0x0