Chicharrón

• 1. Introduction

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  Chicharrón has a Canadian cousin called oreilles de crisse, a traditional Quebec dish of salted fatback fried until crisp. It appears in spring at the sugar shacks, the cabanes à sucre. Diners eat it between plates heavy with maple syrup, where it works as a "palate cleanser". Chicharrón itself is generally fried pork belly or fried pork rinds, though cooks also make it from chicken, mutton or beef. It is cherished in Andalusia and the Canary Islands, across Latin America, in the Philippines and in the Southwestern United States. Why does one crunchy, fatty food show up in so many kitchens? What separates a Peruvian plate from a Filipino snack? And where does the dish stop and a look-alike begin?

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• 2. Cuts And Cooking

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  Peru builds its chicharrón on what Americans call country-style pork rib, and the rind is left out entirely. Cooks boil the meat with seasonings until no water remains, then fry it in its own fat. Bolivia follows a similar path with pork ribs seasoned with garlic, oregano and lemon. The ribs are boiled first and then cooked in their own fat, with beer or chicha added to the pot for flavor. Chile uses fat, sometimes with a little meat. Colombia fries pig skin with meat still attached, and chicken skin works too. Belize makes its version from pork belly, and a separate Belizean variation uses beef skin.

  The classic pork rind style is skin that has been seasoned and deep-fried until crispy and puffy. Other styles are fattier or meatier, fried less, and sometimes still attached to ribs or other bones. Brazil's version is cooked in its own fat or oil, seasoned with garlic, pepper or other spices, and usually finished with a wedge of lime. In Trinidad and Tobago, cooks wash and dry the pork, cut it into small pieces and season it with lemon juice and salt.

  Serbia ties the work to the calendar, because the dish is usually made when pigs are slaughtered for the winter. Cooks use milk and lard to give it a gold color. They then press it through a pressure sift so it takes on the texture of chips. Venezuela's cueritos skip the fryer altogether. They are pork skin marinated in vinegar and eaten as a snack.

  Uruguay offers the strangest origin of all. There, chicharrones are a byproduct of making tallow. Cooks take fat from the softest part of the cow, near the kidneys, which is called grasa de pella. They heat the pella until it melts, and the solid residue left behind is the chicharrones. A bread called rosca de chicharrones puts them to use. Even the name of these cuts shifts as soon as a map line is crossed.

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• 3. One Dish, Many Names

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  Outside Andalusia, Spaniards call the dish torrezno. Within Andalusia and the Canary Islands, chicharrón is the sauced dish and chicharrones are the finger-food snacks. Portugal and Brazil both say torresmo. On Guam, Chamorro speakers say chachalon, a word derived from the Spanish name.

  In the Philippines, the spelling wanders. Chicharon is common, and tsitsaron and sitsaron appear less often. Filipino and Tagalog have no stand-alone plurals, so the singular form or a variant of it works as a mass noun.

  Guatemala adds a twist of vocabulary. There, carnitas means a meatier part of the pork rind. Strictly speaking, a chicharrón is skin and fat, while carnitas carries some meat as well. In many other places, carnitas instead means fried pork meat without skin, or a stew-like dish made from it.

  In Mexico, the north and south each have their own style. The northern version uses fried pork belly and carries more meat than the southern one, and it draws on Spanish torreznos. In Serbia, the name is čvarci. In the Deep South of the United States, home cooks call them cracklings or, colloquially, cracklins. They are made in two steps. The pork skin is first rendered and dried, then fried and puffed. Those names point to many plates, and the Mexican table is the first to examine.

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• 4. Mexico And Central America

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  In Mexico, the taco de chicharrón is a tortilla wrapped around chicharrones with some avocado and a creamy cheese such as queso panela, queso blanco or queso fresco. Hot sauce sometimes joins in. People eat these tacos as snacks, as appetizers or as a main dish. Chicharrón con salsa verde and gorditas de chicharrón are other popular dishes that use it as a main ingredient. Chicharrón de cerdo is sold by many salty snack companies, in supermarkets, and by markets, tianguis and street vendors.

  Since the 1980s, the snack companies Barcel and Sabritas have also sold vegetarian versions. These are made mainly from a puffed cornmeal batter and flavored with chile and lemon.

  Costa Rica pairs its chicharrones with rangpur or lime juice, fried yuca and tortillas. The dish is also a main ingredient in chifrijo, a popular plate that combines chicharrón with red beans, rice and pico de gallo. In El Salvador, cooks chop it up as a stuffing for pupusas.

  Guatemalans eat chicharrón with tortillas, lime, guacamole and moronga sausage. Sometimes it is served with pico de gallo or a Chirmol salsa. From there the dish travels south into the Andes and beyond.

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• 5. South America And Trinidad

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  On Colombia's Caribbean coast, chicharrón arrives with bollo de yuca, bollo limpio or boiled yuca. People eat it that way at breakfast at home, and restaurants serve it at any hour. Cooks chop it as a stuffing for arepas. In Córdoba it goes into sancocho. It is also part of bandeja paisa, a typical dish of Antioquia.

  In Bolivia, pork chicharrón is normally served only on Sundays. It comes with llajwa, a tomato salsa, and with mote, a type of corn. Chicken and fish versions exist there as well.

  Peru serves its chicharrón at breakfast or brunch on a baguette, topped with a relish of red onion and lime juice. It also works as an appetizer or snack, with sides such as fried yuca. The chicken variant can taste like the fried chicken known in the United States, and fish can stand in for pork. Chileans eat theirs with homemade bread.

  In central Venezuela, chicharrones go with cachapas. Vendors also sell them as snacks along the main highways, in crispy, sizable portions of pork skin with the meat beneath. In Trinidad and Tobago, tostones are the usual companion. Puerto Rico folds the dish into several signature recipes.

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• 6. Puerto Rico's Chicharrón Towns

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  The city of Bayamón in Puerto Rico carries the nickname "city of chicharrón", and its locally produced version is famous. The Guavate barrio in the city of Cayey earns the same fame. Puerto Ricans also use chicharrón as an ingredient in rice, cooked with sofrito, pigeon peas and spices.

  Mofongo is a popular dish in which green plantains, cassava or breadfruit are fried and then mashed with chicharrón and other ingredients. In Puerto Rican fondas, chuleta kan-kan starts with a pork chop that keeps its rib, fat and skin. The cook marinates the chop and deep-fries it. The skin turns into crispy chicharrónes attached to the rib and the chop meat.

  Rusiao de yuca is made like pasteles. Cooks dehydrate and toast grated cassava, then rehydrate it with coconut milk to form a masa. They season the masa with anise, oregano and mashed or finely chopped chicharrón, among other ingredients. The portions are wrapped in banana leaf and grilled. Across the Pacific, the Philippines treats the dish as an everyday snack.

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• 7. Philippine Crunch

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  From large supermarket chains to small neighborhood sari-sari stores and street vendors, chicharon can be bought nearly anywhere in the Philippines. Filipinos love it as pulutan or tapas, the foods eaten alongside alcoholic drinks such as beer. Cooks also scatter it on many native vegetable and noodle dishes. The pork version is made by deep-frying dried pork rind with a little salt.

  Diners often dip it in coconut vinegar spiced with soy sauce, chopped garlic and labuyo chili peppers. Other partners include bagoong anchovies, lechon gravy sauce and atchara papaya salad.

  The Philippines also stretches the idea well past pork rind. Chicharong manok is made from chicken skin. Chicharong bulaklak, literally "flower chicharrón", is named for its distinctive shape and is made from pork mesentery. Tuna-skin chicharon is marketed as a healthier option, and in Cagayan, water buffalo hide becomes carabao chicharon.

  Bagnet is a distinct variant in which pork loin and meat are cooked in the same way. It is similar to crispy pata in some respects and different in others. It is more popular as a meal than as finger food, and it has reached contemporary dishes and restaurants. Bagnet comes from Ilocos, where it has been served since the 1960s.

  Fully vegan versions use deep-fried tofu skin, mushrooms, seaweed, starch and other plant-based ingredients. The commercial chips Chicharron ni Mang Juan and Marty's Cracklin' are vegan except for a few flavors. In the United States, the same family of foods turns up in bags on store shelves.

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• 8. Snack Aisle Cousins

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  In the United States, pork rinds are usually pig skin and fat without any meat. Producers season them and sell them in plastic bags, like corn and potato chips, as a "junk food" item. Some brands in the Southwest use the Spanish term chicharrones, and many Mexican and Southwestern restaurants serve Mexican-style chicharrón dishes.

  In New Mexico, the word often means only fried pork fat, sometimes with incidental bits of lean meat. It most commonly goes into bean burritos with chopped New Mexico chile. Cooks colloquially fry it in a disco, a wok-like pan made from a repurposed tractor disc blade.

  Some pork-skin snacks sit outside the chicharrón tradition entirely. In the United Kingdom, pork scratchings are a popular pub and bar snack, sold in small plastic bags like potato crisps. In Denmark, flæskesvær is pork skin deep-fried with or without a layer of fat. Danes eat it as a snack, like crisps or popcorn. At Christmas time, it is also traditional there to eat fried strips of pork belly with the skin on. In the Greek countryside at Christmas, people prepare tsigarídes, which is deep-fried pork belly skin.

  Closer relatives include torreznos, tocino, siu yuk and the Philippines' lechon kawali. Duros are even known as chicharrones themselves, which shows how readily the name moves between foods.

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