How to get good cracking?

[PurpleDaisies]

I've made roast pork for lunch today, and while the meat itself is lovely, the crackling is a total fail (again!).

If you can manage this impossible feat, how do you do it?

Cut it off and put under grill to crisp up. Fat should be as dry as possible when goes in oven. Think delia has some good tips.

Score the skin well, rub plenty of salt into all the cuts, rub in some oil, use fresh oil to baste the joint as it cooks so you are not pouring meat juices over the crackling.

Interesting-I've not come across cooking it separately before. I've tried salting but it ended up as a salty mess. I'm normally quite a good cook...

I've got the classic Delia book. I'll have a look (which thinking about it would have been a good plan before...).

Yeah you don't cook it completely separately but take it off towards the end and either grill or bake when the meat is resting...

Por boiling water over the joint - let the water run off or tip it away, don't let it sit in the water. Pat dry with kitchen paper. Sprinkle salt then cook as directed, usually starting with a high oven temp - put as high in the oven as possible.

I score the pork skin really well, pour a kettle of boiling water over it, pat it dry and salt really well and it always works well. I love pork but find it really hit and miss to buy - one week a lovely joint, the next is 90% fat and smells rank.

Thanks all. I'll be popping to the butchers and let you know how I get on...

Using an Aga works really well, but rather an expensive method of getting really crips crackling.....

I'd love an Aga tb but that's a bit out of the budget at the moment!

We got our insider tips from our butcher and it rarely fails (although I do think that sometimes it's the skin itself that just doesn't crackle and nowt to do with how you cook it). Anyhow we always take the joint out the fridge 3-4 hours before cooking, score the skin well into thin strips if you can, dry with kitchen roll and sprinkle fine salt over the skin, check after a couple of hours and you should see the moisture that had been drawn out of the skin by the salt, rub the salt off with kitchen roll until skin is dry again and apply more salt, whilst oven is heating up rub the salt off again before rubbing oil over the skin and cooking as usual. We never baste the skin during cooking and you can usually see within about 15 minutes if the crackling has bubbled up and will be perfect. We just had it for tea - was yummy!