Never heard of chicharron before. Sounds like Pork mischief to me!

Never heard of chicharron before. Sounds like Pork mischief to me!

Prepare yourself to be impressed. All by myself, I made chicharron.

Yay!!!

Unfamiliar with the Filipino phrase? Maybe you know it better as pork rinds, or cracklins as I hear they call it somewhere. People 'round the world, it seems, have discovered the delicacy. So it's not a bit healthy. I don't care. It's quite tasty. No, really, it is.

I'm not in the habit of making pork rinds, but when I saw a big square of pork skins at the market for just $1, I knew I could figure something out.

I told my dad, "I bought pork skins."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"I don't know."

"Ehhh! Then why did you buy it if you didn't know what to do with it?" Little does dear Dad know that I buy things I don't know how to use all the time. My shelves are stocked with items I still have to look up in the Internet to know how to eat.

"That's why I'm calling you! How do you make chicharron?"

It turns out that making pork rinds is pretty easy. You boil it in a pot of water for about half an hour, cut into bite-size pieces, and bake in the oven at about 300 degrees for about 3 hours. Nuthin' to it. Even I couldn't mess this up.

This will, of course, fill up the place with a porky smell. I didn't mind it at all, but all one of my siblings had to say about my intention to make chicharron was, "When Mom and Dad make that, it stinks up the whole house."

The result is a very hard, crispy piece of pork rind that, according to Foodgoat, tastes just like bacon, which is a well-known synomym for delicious, yummy, tasty, etc.

You can also then deep fry the pieces, which will supposedly puff them up, making them airy and fluffy like they are in most commercial versions of chicharron, but I skipped this step, since it's got enough fat in it as it is.

Chicharron can be eaten straight up, like chips, but I prefer it more along the lines of the Filipino way: with white rice and a bit of Mang Tomas (liver) sauce or vinegar, for dinner. What chicharron doesn't get eaten right away is going to get beaten and ground up into crumbs, which can be sprinkled on top of noodles or rice or potatoes or salad, like Bacon Bits.

Sounds good to you now, huh?