For The Most Flavorful Breading, There's One Pork Snack You Need

If you want to add umami to truly excellent chicken parmesan, or need an ingredient that will seriously upgrade your mac and cheese, say bye-bye to breadcrumbs and head over to the snack aisle for a big bag of pork rinds. These ultra crispy, pork-rich snacks make an excellent breading or topping whether you want to kick up a chicken schnitzel or add a flavorful, crunchy contrast to a creamy carrot casserole.

A multi-step process, pork rinds are made from rendering the fat from pork skins which are dehydrated, and then baked or deep fried. The result is a light, puffy snack similar in texture to Cheetos Puffs. The skin puffs and becomes airy when deep-fried. Why? When subject to high heat, the moisture left trapped inside the skin quickly turns to steam, creating crispy bubbles. Pork rinds differ from chewier cracklings or chicharrones which often have fat and a little bit of meat still attached to the skin before frying.

With the advent of low carb diets, many people discovered how crushed pork rinds were an ideal, high-fat replacement for breadcrumbs in all of their favorite recipes, from parmesan-crusted salmon with creamy herb sauce to a lightly breaded chicken meunière. Using pork rinds as breading is easy; just crush them right in the bag with a rolling pin, being sure to poke a small hole to let some air out. Otherwise, the bag could pop, letting pork rinds fly all over your kitchen. If you prefer, you can also dump the pork rinds into your food processor and pulse until they reach a breadcrumb consistency.

For an even simpler solution, you can buy pork rind crumbs (also called pork panko) online, packed into a jar and ready to go. Better yet, both pre-crushed pork rinds and the bags on the snack aisle have a wide range of flavors, including savory options such as dill pickle, BBQ, and jalapeño and sweet flavors like birthday cake, cinnamon churro, and butterscotch. Just imagine the salty-sweet bliss from a bite of peach cobbler topped with a pork rind-infused crumble.