Secrets to the Perfect Pork Crackle
Well after today there will be no secrets so listen closely as I will only tell you once.
This is the method I have found works for me and as yet have had no failures.
First of all you need to choose your roast a 1.5kg – 2 kg roast will easily feed 4-6 people. I like to choose a piece of meat that just has a piece of skin on the top and not around the sides as it’s quite difficult to get the sides of your oven hot enough to pop the crackle.
You will need to cook your meat for one hour 10-15 minutes per kilogram so a 2kilogram roast should take up to 2.5 hours to cook.
Place your roast into your camp oven and pat the skin dry, smear with a little oil and sprinkle liberally with salt.
I like to add a couple of centimetres of water in the bottom to make sure the meat doesn’t dry out and stick to the bottom.
Place your camp oven on a rack over a small amount of fire coals, heat beads or charcoal, put the lid on and make a ring of coals around the outer edge of the lid.
Cook for about one hour making sure you replace dead coals and brush away ash build up to maintain a constant temperature.
At this point I like to add 2-3 cored and halved apples underneath the roast, replace the lid and cook for a further 30-40 minutes.
At about this stage you will be thinking I have given you some dudd instructions but so long as you can ignore the fact your crackling looks more like boot leather you will be fine.
Now comes the magic, remove all your old coals from the top of the lid and replace with a fresh red hot batch and place them all over the lid.
Now this part of the process is the most important so you can’t walk away or get distracted as your crackling will end up over done and burnt with all those fresh hot coals blasting straight down on top of your roast.
The final crackling process should take about 20 minutes maybe even less, don’t be afraid to peek the last thing you want is to destroy your beautiful crackle at this late stage.
Crackling is done and perfect when it is has all bubbled and popped on the top and sounds hard when tapped with a knife.
As a bonus to this recipe remember those apples you paced in the bottom of your pan, well now all you need to do is mash them up with all those lovely roasting juices and presto the perfect apple gravy to go with the perfect pork. Enjoy.