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Pigskin Party

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By JEFF HOUCK, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 30, 2008

JUMPS: PORK RINDS, Page

Magazine calls them "genius snack food."

Eight years ago, Jeremy Selwyn's love for crispy, delicious and decadent snacks drew him to the Snack Food Association's annual convention. The Boston area software engineer, who collected unique and odd-flavored brands of potato chips and displayed them on the Internet, was on the hunt for new items on the market.

It was then that he discovered the pork rind.

"We didn't really have those in New England back then," he says.

While talking to a representative from Rudolph Foods, the largest producer of pork rinds in the world, he learned about the snack's low-carbohydrate health benefits, that President George H.W. Bush kept a batch of Poppy's pork rinds on his desk and in the Cabinet room, and that Lima, Ohio - home to Rudolph Foods - is the pork rind capital of the world.

A lot has changed since that day.

Pork rinds, once among the smallest of regional niche snacks, became one of the fastest-growing segments of the nation's snack industry, thanks to the low-carb Atkins Diet craze that hit after the turn of the millennium. And Selwyn has gone on to review thousands of snack items for his astonishingly comprehensive Web site, Taquitos.net. The site includes reviews of almost 50 brands of pork rinds, which have nudged their way into the market for attention on the biggest snacking day of the year, Super Bowl Sunday. On that day alone, 11 million pounds of potato chips, 8 million pounds of tortilla chips and almost 4 million pounds of popcorn will be consumed.

"Pork rinds have definitely been a growth area in the snack industry, but not quite mainstream yet," Selwyn says. "It's a relatively small market compared to pretzels and popcorn and chips. But five years ago, you wouldn't be able to find a bag where I live. Now, they're pretty readily available. I'm not sure what New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady will be eating."

Roots Go Deeper Than The South

Although some might think of pork rinds - also known popularly as cracklings, cracklins or chicharrones- as a strictly Southern treat, crispy, fried pigskin has a much broader appeal. Chinese cooks, in an effort to maximize the amount of food they can eat off the pig, have been frying the skins for more than a thousand years. In England, they're known as pork scratchings. In the Philippines, they're called sitsaron. In France, they're grattons. In China, the skins are shredded into pork sung, or meat floss.

In the United States, the three types predominantly sold are:

•Pork rinds - fried skin that comes from a pig's back and belly.

•Tender crackling, or cracklin - shoulder skin that has a small fat layer left on, which is then fried. Latin cooks mostly use this type as a snack and also as an ingredient in such foods as salsa verde and mole sauce or as a taco topping. In Mexico City, pork rinds are served with huevos and frijoles to add bacon flavoring.

•Hard crackling, or cracklin - ham skins, the least popular of the three, are smoked and cooked to a low moisture level that produces a hard, fatbacklike chicharrones.

"Hard cracklins are what many people who grew up on farms remember their parents making in cast-iron pots when they would slaughter a hog," says Mark Singleton, Rudolph's vice president of sales. "We get so many letters from people saying, 'This reminds me of what my grandpa used to make.'"

The family-owned company that started by producing Mexican nuts and seeds has grown in five decades to produce hundreds of millions of bags at plants in Dallas, Atlanta and San Bernardino, Calif., as well as in Europe and Mexico.

When John Rudolph started the business, all pork skins were made from bacon rinds. The bacon was smoked with the skin on.. Rudolph would then trim it off, cut it into pieces and fry it.

In the mid-1950s, the company went into a tailspin because bacon producers changed the way they made bacon, choosing to quit making it with the skin on. Rudolph's wife, Mary, came to the rescue. The former home economics teacher found a way to smoke the skin and add ingredients that replicated the flavor of smoked bacon rinds. It allowed the company to buy raw skins, then dry, cure and cook them.

Signs Point To Renewed Interest

The company saw sales soar starting in 2003 with the Atkins and South Beach Diet crazes. Pork rinds had zero trans fatty acids and no carbohydrates, plus they were described in Men's Health magazine as a "genius junk food."

"We had millions who tried them that would have just as soon kissed the pig than eaten the pork rind," Singleton says. "But now that they were good for you, it changed everyone's mind."

The category waned as Atkins and South Beach diets faded, but there are signs of renewed interest. Sales in 2007 were up 9 percent in the industry over those in 2006. Some of that is because of the growth in the Hispanic population, which makes up a majority of the pork rind consumers in the United States.

Asian consumers on the West Coast also are buying more to use as ingredients in recipes. Diabetics, who have difficulty digesting carbohydrates, have turned to pork rinds for a salty snack.

Sales start to take off during college football bowl season, Singleton says.

"We always see a surge on Super Bowl Sunday. It will be like this from now until June, when school gets out."

CHICHARRONES (PORK CRACKLINGS)

2 pounds pork rind or skin trim most of the fat and discard

1 teaspoon salt

Cooking oil for deep-fat frying

For dipping sauce:

2 cups water

2 tablespoons vinegar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 clove crushed garlic.

Dash of black pepper, optional.

Cut pork rind into 2-inch squares. Sprinkle with salt, spread on cookie sheet in one layer, and bake in a 250-degree oven for 3 hours.

Cool and set aside in covered jars until ready to use. When needed, pour oil to about 1/3 the depth of the pan. Heat 5 to 8 minutes on medium-high heat. Fry pork rinds until they puff up about 3 to 5 minutes; drain. Mix sauce ingredients together. Serve with pork rinds.

Serves 6.

Source: tasteofcuba.com

HOT PORK RIND CORN BREAD

1 cup hot pork rinds, crushed

2 cups water

2 tablespoons bacon dripping

1 cup yellow cornmeal

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Mix pork rinds in water.

Add bacon drippings to cast-iron skillet, and heat in oven.

Meanwhile, add cornmeal and salt to mixture, stirring well. Pour into hot pan, place in oven and bake for 15 minutes. Then reduce heat to 350 degrees, and bake for additional 30 to 45 minutes.

Source: bakespace.com

LOW-CARB PANCAKES (PORK RINDS)

1/2 of a 3-ounce bag of unflavored pork rinds

2 eggs

1/4 cup heavy cream

3 packets of Splenda (or other sugar alternative)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 dash nutmeg

Crumble pork rinds until they resemble bread crumbs.

In a separate bowl, beat eggs until frothy, then add remaining ingredients and continue to beat until mixed well. Add pork rinds to the egg and cream mixture, and set aside for 5 minutes to allow batter to thicken.

Cook in a lightly greased skillet as you would any pancake recipe. Drop batter on surface by large spoonfuls. Cook until each side is lightly browned.

Serve with butter and a low-carb store-bought syrup.

Or for an interesting low-carb topping: Mix 1 tablespoon of sugar-free jam with 1 1/2 tablespoons water; microwave for 45 seconds.

Makes 1 serving.

Source: mrbreakfast.com

Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324 or jhouck@tampatrib.com.

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