The Hairdryer Trick For Incredibly Crispy Pork Skin
Pork is always a crowd-pleasing entrée. Its high fat content keeps it from drying out and gives every cut a heaping dose of flavor. Just because you've finally mastered the perfect roast pork tenderloin recipe doesn't make you pork roasting royalty, though. Pork has a ton of variety between its different cuts, and that leaves plenty of room to grow and experiment.
One of the best ways to expand your pork cooking repertoire is to start cooking with skin-on pork. According to The New York Times, cultures across the globe all have some kind of snack or treat based on the crispy cooked skin from a pig. Whether it's called scratchings, chicharrón, or pork rinds, fried pork skins are always delicious when prepared properly.
While you can enjoy this treat by itself, as BBC Good Food points out, one of the best ways to enjoy crackling is by cooking an entire roast with the skin on. This recipe for Italian porchetta is one of the most delicious ways to enjoy crispy crackling along with the heavily herbaceous meat wrapped up inside.
How to create the most impressive crackling
An important factor to keep in mind when creating the best pork crackling is moisture. The Free Range Butcher points out that too much moisture on the surface of the roast can prevent good crackling from forming.
While it might sound like an unconventional kitchen tool, one of the best ways to ensure your meat has dried sufficiently is to use a hair dryer. Men's Health claims that scoring the meat, flash cooking it with a splash of boiling water, and then drying it off with a hair dryer is one of the best ways to ensure perfect crackling. Patting the pork dry with a paper towel is a great starting point to drying off your meat. But by giving it a little bit of extra time under a hair dryer, you can be certain that it's as dry as possible.
The warm, dry air pushed out by a hair dryer will make quick work of any excess moisture. This way, as soon as the fat starts to render and come through the skin, it will start to fry up instantly and create a gorgeous layer of crackling over any cut of pork.
The importance of scoring your pork roast
Another important factor in getting the best crackling on your roast pork is understanding the importance of scoring. Delicious explains that scoring is the process of making several shallow cuts across the surface of a piece of meat. Scoring has several different purposes. Aesthetically, it can create a more visually pleasing roast when it's brought to the table. It also keeps the meat from warping as it cooks and the skin and flesh tighten.
Scoring the pork skin also helps create beautiful crackling, per Cook's Info. This will allow the layer of fat underneath to flow over the skin as it renders. While the pork roasts, the melted fat will boil out over the skin, and essentially fry it into pork rinds while it cooks.
Cook's Info says that scoring can be done with any knife, but there are also specialized tools that are designed to puncture holes in the skin as well. These ensure that you'll still have delicious crackling without creating a deliberate pattern on the surface of the pork.