Chicharones

When I roasted the pork belly in my Ramen entry, I wound up throwing out the skin I removed from the belly. I knew that I had an opportunity to make these for the event, but the hours were wearing on me in the kitchen and I didn't have the time to do all this.
I've largely stuck to the recipe in the Momofuku cookbook, but I didn't want to buy a food dehydrator just for this project when I could just set them in a low oven for three hours. Sorry, I'll wait for some other project to urge me along into buying one.
Hmm, the URL I used seems to have gone dead, but I'm pretty sure I had the pork rinds in the oven at about 250 degrees F for 3 hours. No, I didn't totally fail, David Chang.


Throw the pork belly in a pot and fill it nearly to the brim with cold water. Bring to a boil and boil hard for 1 1/2 hours.


At that point the water will look like this.


Draining them a bit. Notice that this process totally didn't remove the fat, but I assume this makes the next step easier.


One must remove all the fat from the pork belly or "they'll have the texture of soggy packing peanuts if fried." I think I had a few patches of fat, but I did make a good attempt and was fine.
Imagine scraping that down raw? Sounds gross and hard to do, but in my googling I didn't see another example of this technique.


Laid out and sprinkled with a little salt.


Three hours later. See the patches of fat? Overall though, good job.


Heating the fat to 390-400 degrees F.


And then you have chicharones. I think I enjoy ones made out of chicken skin better. Or maybe I should have gone ahead with Latin flavors (ground dried chipotle, lime, salt) rather than Asian (togarishi, a Japanese chili blend, and salt).
I suppose I'll figure that out next time.