pigskins for the super bowl

It’s the Super Bowl tomorrow. Most of America will be watching (although I always find it strange when people watch just for the ads). And most of us will be gathered with friends, eating and laughing, taking bets on who will win. And yes, watching the commercials.

If it’s a good party, you’ll be eating crispy pigskins.

“‘It’s just fat and salt and crunch,” said Lester Ayala, a cook from Connecticut who had dropped into Porchetta in the East Village for the first time last month to try a sandwich with a good ratio of soft, lean pork to fatty, crispy skin. ‘What’s better than that?’

To be sure, fat, salt and crunch should always be invited to a Super Bowl gathering. Adding a porky layer of fried skin not only gives heft and flavor to the snack menu, pigskin is just sort of fun to serve at football games.”

Click on this link to read the entire New York Times article about the rise of pig cracklings, pork rinds, and crisp pigskins in the last few years, an era Kim Severson characterizes as “…a good slice of the country still deep in its pork worship period.”

And with the New Orleans Saints in the Super Bowl, why not eat what they do in New Orleans?

“Cracklings are the American cousins of the French grattons and the chicharrón common to Latin America. In its perfect form, a crackling offers a square of skin that cracks when you bite into it, giving way to a little pocket of hot fat and a salty layer of pork meat.”

Of course, if you are an Indianapolis Colt fan, you might not want to eat the New Orleans treat. Then again, it’s pork. You’ll probably make an exception.

What porky goodness will you be eating for your Super Bowl party?

And if you’re reading this Monday, give us the play-by-play of your pork after the fact.