Pork and Pork Rinds. Why so Popular?
In response to Kyri and Adam. Two separate questions here. The first, which I take it is implicit in Adam’s comment, is that fried pork rinds are also popular in Southeast Asia and other parts of Latin America. And, I would add, if we stretch that a bit to roast pork crackling in England and China too.
What I think is different in Mexico is what Mexico Bob pointed to when he called them a major food group, half jokingly of course. But he’s right. Chicharrón in Central Mexico (and may be other parts too) is not just a snack, though it can be that. It is made into a huge variety of dishes. It’s rare to go to a breakfast buffet or a tacquería and not find a a chicharrón dish. Here’s Ricardo Muñoz onthe subject:
Chicharrón is almost part of the daily diet of Mexicans and almost all of them eat it at least once a week because there are many ways to consume it: in tacos de chicharrón y tacos placeros, in salsa verde, as chicharrón prensado, in salad or with refried beans; some tamal doughs also contain chicharrón.
So my question is partly the economics of this. Sometimes I don´t think Mexicans consume enough of the rest of the pig to generate enough skin to make it a major meat, essentially. And I don’t know how it is treated in other parts of Latin America but I don’t think it’s a major way of eating pork, as opposed to a snack, in most other parts of the world. And it’s part of the more general question we have kicked around before about the relative lack of cured pork products in Mexico when compared with Spain and the abundance of fried pork products (carnitas and chicharrón).
And Kyri’s question is the more general one about the popularity of pork in Spain, France and England. Yes surely part of it is that it was one of those foods that came to be eaten as a badge of Christianity. But I think that reinforced and played on a preference that was already in place. The Celts (who were essentially all the peoples around the European borders of the Roman Empire including Spain) held the pig in high regard as the symbol of fertility (rather than grain) and for eating. It may even be that the Roman Empire took its liking for pig (one of the things that differentiated Roman and Greek Cuisine) from the north, first early on from the Celts who lived in the north of the peninsula, then in the later empire when Celts became Emperors and imposed some of their food customs. This is all back in a pretty murky and ill-documented past of course.
As an offal (and a major proportion of the animal) I should think that they would be independently popular in many cultures (one of the “salads” that commonly sold at Vietnamese restaurants in Melbourne is made from thinly cut pork skin – most Anglo-Celtic diners think it is a noodle of some type).
In Laos, water-buffalo skin was/is a major and popular food stuff.
It occurs to me that in subsistence farming the hog can be raised on “nutritional components” (“Go slop the hog.”) which otherwise would be waste. I remember my mother, living in cracklin deprived Idaho and California, talking fondly of cracklins which were pretty important in the USA rural south where she grew up.
http://www.deltablues.net/cracklin.html
Actually it is not a bad snack food when you consider that it has protein and almost no carbs. It is no wonder pork rinds are a popular treat in most areas of the world.