This man understands this thread.

it's hard to go wrong with spicy chicharrones and beer.

That’s true, but the picture shows a Miller Lite.

spicy chicharrones were invented to make Miller Lite (and Corona, and Budweiser) drinkable.

Also, the guy who buys 5 bags of pork rinds from the Raceway every week damn sure isn't going to wash them down with an overpriced microbrew.

Yes! Damn those are good.

Yep. I think of the cheap light beer domestics as more of a beer flavored soft drink than real beer so it goes perfect with **** like pork rinds.

I agree. The beer is an accessory to the pork rinds. You don't want a good beer that is going to fight with the pork rinds.

Havent tried chicharrones yet but love me some old fashioned pork scratchings! This is my favorite brand:



I especially love the fatty bits. I never saw them in big bags, only like this:



I order them from Amazon from time to time; they last me like a week...

Just finished a bag of Trader Joe's Organic Yellow corn tortilla chip rounds. No fake flavoring, just a delicious crispy corn chip with just the right amount of salt. Perfection itself. Ate about half the bag with no accompaniment.

I just tried these out. Pretty tasty with good lime flavoring.

Morph, i don't know if there's a technical difference between chicharrones/pork rinds/scratchings, but my hunch is they are all pretty much the same: gloriously fried crispy pig skin with various seasonings.

There isn't. Chicharron is just the Spanish word for fried pork belly / fried pork rinds.

i knew that, but wasn't sure about if there is a difference with 'scratchings'.

Red,

Pork rinds usually are just fried skin, and are usually kinda fluffy and crispy, ideally melt in your mouth. 4505 classic chicharrones are the best packaged pork rind around.

Pork cracklings are sometimes the same as pork rinds, but often have some fat attached and are a little denser and harder than pork rinds. Epic maple bacon pork cracklings are the best packaged ones I’ve had (tho I haven’t had many).

Chicharrones can be either of those things, (skin or skin+fat), or can also be skin+fat+meat. My favorites are fresh out of the fryer at La Palma in San Francisco.



In this last pic, the lighter ones at the bottom look like classic pork rinds, while the sorta chunkier pieces near the top of the pic look more like cracklings.

We could all use a little bit of this in our lives.

Excuse my total ignorance because I don’t eat that stuff, but does that mean the cracklings for $20/lbs at the butcher shop are basically a glorified version of pork rinds? Every time we visit my wife’s grandparents in Louisiana, I have to buy her a pound of those and always wonder how/why one of the poorer parts of the country spends that much money on fried fat.

Mad,

Those are prob something like the pics I posted ($9.99/lb at the Mexican deli). They could range from fresh pork rinds (fried pig skin) to fried skin-on pork belly (fried skin + fat + meat).

Haha yeah I didn't really want to get too deep in the weeds with this because chicharrones gets used interchangeably with all three.

El D,

i am very familiar with all the nuances you described, but my question was specifically about 'scratchings', a term i'm not familiar with.

by the way, if you ever find yourself in Logroño, La Rioja Spain, try the torreznos pintxos at either Jamonero Pata Negra or Bar La Esquina

Hot take: not a fan of nacho cheese Doritos

I'm a sucker for hot food so I couldn't resist trying a bag of Flamin' Hot Nacho Doritos despite the take above.

They're not that hot and obviously taste like the nacho cheese ones. I'm an idiot.

I really miss the salsa Doritos they had back in the day. Best flavor they had imo.

Grabbed these today. Also, 99 cent avocados ship it. Grabbed 2 ripe 4 not.

Tried to buy them the other day, but they didn’t have them in stock

But at least avocados have been 39 cents around here for a couple of weeks now, which means I am having one almost every day.