Perfect Roast Pork Crackling

Barberal's Note:

This is the only way to make true crackling on your pork roast. It took me years to perfect this and this is the first recipe to share on zaar

• Total Time: 4 hrs 15 mins
• Prep Time: 15 mins
• Cook Time: 4 hrs

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

• 1 (3 -5 kg) pork leg (50 minutes per kilogram at 190degrees celsius)
• 1 teaspoon dried fennel seed
• sea salt
• black pepper
• olive oil
• boiling water

Directions:

1. Score pork skin, best to have your butcher do this.
2. Place pork in colander and pour boiling water over to open the skin. Dry thoroughly and then place in fridge for 1-2 hours.
3. Remove from fridge and rub with salt -- Then mix ground fennel seeds with olive oil and rub all over pork and into slits.
4. The flavour is magnificent. Use your own judgement on cooking times, but a general suggestion is around 50 minutes per kilogram in a moderate to hot oven.

Reviews

[cookingpompom]

PERFECT....I have been cooking for a long time and this was outstanding. I scored the pork deeply every 1cm deeply, the boiling water seemed to "open" the slits. I dried it off, poured over a little oil and rubbed in hte salt. I didn't bother refridgerating it or using the fennel as I like my pork natural. I baked it at 240oC for 30 minutes and 180oc for 3 hours, it was by far my best roast pork ever!! No more hit and misses with this method - thank you Barberal!!!

[whitewings 33]

Sorry I couldnt rate the recipe higher as starting the oven at 190 degrees resulted in a hard skin with no blistering or true "crackle" and yeat I followed it to the letter the first time. However as cookingpompom suggested I started with a Hot oven preheated to 240 untill the rind was visibly blistering - roughly half an hour, and then reduced to 190 for the remaining cooking time and it was truly spectacular... seems like there might be a step missing in there somewhere :)

[djmastermum]

Oh my I knew that this was going to be great when my son came in and said, 'WOW, tea speels GREAT!"And of course he was right! I would get the burcher to score the park next time though ... I am lazy :-O