Chicharrón
If you are a fan of fried pork rinds, go right now to Mexico Bob’s exhaustive discussion of chicharrón, Mexican for fried pork rind. You will never want to touch those pallid little curls in plastic packets again.
Just to add a couple of things to what Bob says, I was going to upload for you a photo of pig skins hanging from a washing line on the roof so that they can dry out before frying. But I discover I have left the upload cord for my camera in Mexico City-no uploading for a month or so.
I also want to urge you to try any dish with chicharrón prensado. You don’t see many recipes. But cooked in a chile guajillo sauce it is quite wonderful.
I’m not sure, either, quite where the word comes from. But it has spawned all kinds of sayings. If you burn something in the oven, it’s become chicharrón. If you think you’re the big person, you can say something to the effect that around here only my chicharrones thunder. If you give chicharrones to something or someone, it’s slang for to break up or to kill. And so on.
I can’t help but wonder how and why pork skin became so crucial to the culture of central Mexico. Any ideas?
“Chicharrón are sold in plastic bags here in Melbourne, where there isn’t a large Mexican community. However, there are large Chilean, Peruvian and Brazilian communities. They are also sold in SE-Asian grocers, as these communities also like fried puffed up pork rinds in various dishes.
I’ve wondered if pork became so important to French, German, and Spanish food because from the 16th century it was the ultimate insider food. You couldn’t be Muslim or Jewish and partake of the meal. Either you wouldn’t be there to begin with, or you were outed if you didn’t eat the meal.
What do you think?
Kyri,
I think you have a good point. During the Inquisition there were spies always watching to see if anyone was cooking or eating out of the norm.
Yes, well that’s what I’m wondering (not being a specialist in this area), were pigs among the 4-legged critters that the Spanish introduced into Mexico and was eating pork some pro-Christian ritual that they promoted? This is all completely unsubstantiated speculation on my part, so this is really a question to those of you who know this history better than I.
Rachel,
My family is from Zacatecas and they would slaughter a pig twice a year. The skin and extra fat bits were always fried and served the day of the slaughter. So it was a very festive, and delicious, treat with some promise of the meat to follow. Chicharrones are a very male dish, it is one of those dishes I always associate with men cooking. In fact, my father has his very own chicharron contraption, a metal drum gassed by a propane tank with a huge aluminum pan on top for frying. My brother is an engineer and made him a very sophisticated press for extracting all the fat, this results in a very dry and crisp chicharron. Even still, my father is 78, at every family gathering he will start his preparations at dawn in anticipation of the arrival of his 8 children and their brood. I was hoping to inherit said contraption but, as is the tradition, it is intended for my only brother.
Oh, do you know the Italian equivalent? While in Fanano, above Bologna, years ago I went to a traditional food fair. There I came across someone selling pork from two large cakes. Both were comprised of bits of fatty pork bits spotted with meat, though one was dry while the other moist. They tasted just like chicharrones, salt and all!