Glass-Puffed Pork Crackling with Salt & Vinegar Dust

By Sprig Originals ✓ · cooked up in Sprig

The bar-snack crackling that shatters instead of shatters your teeth: pork skin is simmered until gelatinous, scraped clean, dried low and slow into amber glass, then flash-fried so every piece puffs into an airy, blistered cloud. Finished with a tangy salt-and-vinegar dust, it out-crunches any bagged pork rind and keeps for a week in a jar.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lb pork skin, in large sheets (from the butcher, or peeled off a skin-on pork belly)
• 2 tbsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 garlic cloves, smashed
• 1 tbsp black peppercorns

• 6 cups peanut or canola oil (or reserved rendered pork fat)

• 2 tsp fine sea salt
• 2 tsp malt vinegar powder (or apple cider vinegar powder)
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp citric acid (optional, for extra pucker)
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Rinse the pork skin and lay it flat on a board. If there is a thick pad of fat on the underside, trim the worst of it off with a sharp knife, leaving no more than about 1/4 inch — you'll scrape the rest away later. Cut the skin into pieces roughly 4 inches wide so they fit comfortably in a pot.
2. Put the skin in a large pot with the kosher salt, baking soda, bay leaves, garlic and peppercorns. Cover with cold water by 2 inches, bring to a boil, then reduce to a bare simmer. Cook uncovered at 200–205°F for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until a piece is floppy and a paring knife slides through it with no resistance. Top up with hot water if the skin pokes above the surface.
3. Lift the skin onto a rimmed baking sheet with tongs and let it cool 15 minutes, until it's warm but handleable. Discard the simmering liquid (or chill it and lift off the cap of pork fat to fry in later).
4. Lay each piece fat-side up and scrape the underside firmly with the back of a spoon or a dull-edged knife, working in long strokes, until you're down to a smooth, translucent, gelatin-clear layer. This is the single most important step: leftover fat steams instead of puffing and makes chewy spots. Blot both sides dry with paper towels.
5. Cut the scraped skin into snack-size pieces, about 1 1/2 by 2 inches. They will roughly double in size when they puff, so keep them small. Trim off any ragged, thin edges.
6. Arrange the pieces scraped-side down on a wire rack set in a rimmed baking sheet, not touching. Dry in a 200°F oven for 2 1/2 to 4 hours, flipping once at the halfway point, until the pieces are hard, amber, and glassy — they should snap like brittle plastic with no give at all. Any flexibility means they need more time. (A dehydrator at 155°F for 8–10 hours works too, as does a rack in the fridge overnight followed by 2 hours in the oven.)
7. Cool the dried skins completely. At this stage they keep in an airtight jar at room temperature for up to 2 weeks, so you can fry them to order.
8. Whisk all the salt-and-vinegar dust ingredients together in a small bowl and set it next to the stove with a large bowl and a paper-towel-lined tray.
9. Pour the oil into a heavy 4- to 5-quart pot to a depth of about 2 inches and heat to 400°F on a deep-fry thermometer. Have a splatter screen or a pot lid within reach — the pieces pop energetically for the first few seconds.
10. Fry in small batches of 5 or 6 pieces. Slide them in and they should balloon and blister within 10 to 30 seconds; press any stubborn piece under with a spider skimmer to keep it submerged. Pull them out the moment they stop bubbling hard and are fully puffed and pale gold, before they take on much color — about 45 seconds total. Let the oil come back to 400°F between batches.
11. Drain each batch on paper towels for 10 seconds, then tip into the large bowl and dust generously with the salt-and-vinegar mix while still glistening, tossing to coat. Serve within a few hours for peak crunch; store cooled cracklings in a loosely closed paper bag or jar at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Chef's tips

Nutrition (per serving, estimated)

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