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Cracklin' Bread
Cut fresh pork fat into dice, unless you can buy crackling (abbreviated to cracklin' by the Southern drawl) from your butcher-it's just the crisp residue after the lard has been rendered out, and there are regular "rendering days" each week, down South. Fry the pork until every bit of grease is out of it. Drain on paper. Then make a thick batter with 2 cups of corn meal, 1 teaspoon of salt and cold water. Beat thoroughly, mix in the chunks of juicy crackling, and drop large spoonfuls on the greased griddle. Fry slowly until crisp and brown on both sides. Eat hot, as is. No butter is necessary, for this is a bread that supplies its own spread.
A three-ingredient batter bread whose success rests entirely on the cracklings and the pace of the griddle. Everything else is cornmeal, salt and water.
- CracklingsWhat the recipe calls for is the crisp solids left after pork fat is rendered to lard, sold today as pork cracklings or chicharrones in Southern markets and Latin groceries. If you render your own from diced fatback, cook it slowly until the bits are dry and brittle rather than chewy, then drain well and chop to pea size; wet or soft cracklings will steam the batter from the inside.
- CornmealUse stone-ground white or yellow cornmeal, not degerminated fine meal and not corn flour. Self-rising cornmeal mix would change the recipe entirely, since this batter is deliberately unleavened.
- Water temperatureCold water is specified and matters less than the resting: let the beaten batter stand five minutes so the meal hydrates, then check the consistency. It should hold its shape on the spoon and spread only slightly, roughly like thick oatmeal.
- SaltOne teaspoon for two cups of meal assumes unsalted cracklings. Commercial cracklings are usually salted, so taste a piece and cut the salt back accordingly.
- Griddle heat"Fry slowly" is the hinge. Keep the griddle at a moderate, medium-low heat so the interior has time to set before the crust colors; over high heat the outside browns well before the center cooks through. Expect several minutes a side.
- GreasingA film of the rendered lard is the obvious choice and gives the right flavor. Cast iron is worth using here for the even, sustained heat the slow frying needs.
- Yield and servingTwo cups of meal makes about ten to twelve cakes, enough for four as a side. They are at their best straight off the griddle and go leathery within the hour; reheat in a dry skillet rather than a microwave.
- An oven versionThe same batter, cracklings and all, can also be baked in a preheated greased cast-iron skillet in a hot oven until set and browned; cracklin' bread is often made this way as a pone.
Cracklin' bread is a byproduct dish twice over: cornmeal was the staple grain of the rural South, and cracklings were what remained after hog fat was rendered into lard, the cooking fat that made most Southern cooking possible. Hog killing traditionally waited for the first sustained cold of late autumn, and rendering followed immediately, which is why cracklings were seasonal in farm households even where, as this book notes, regular rendering days made them available weekly. The bread needs no oven and no leavening, qualities that made it as practical over a campfire griddle as on a kitchen stove. Its appeal is self-contained, as the last line says: the fat is already in the bread.