Cracklins

Some foods have dirty secrets. Ever heard what's in a hot dog? Ever wondered what makes artificial bacon bits taste like real bacon? There are even some pretty nasty rumors about chocolate. They're foods with a past, foods no one would stick in their mouth if only they knew the truth. And yet, in our ignorance, we eat on.

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But there are some foods that are pretty up front and honest about their revolting provenance. Foods that often fly below the radar of the national palate, foods that appeal to a certain population or region, but would disgust the general public. Foods, like Cracklins.

Eaten mostly in the rural South, Cracklins are basically fried lard. After pork fat is rendered and removed from the vat, a thick film of dense lard is left behind. This lard is then chopped, fried and seasoned. For lots of people, they're like potato chips.

It should be noted up front that this reviewer has never actually tried Cracklins, but has it on the authority of his Mississippi-born grandfather that they are "some of the finest things 'round," and from John L. Doughty, who runs www.deltablues.net, that "those cracklins fresh out of the grease were some fine eatin."

One of the most central parts of the arrogant American persona is a belief that we have the best, most universally appealing foods. Who wouldn't like a hamburger, or a pizza? French fries, potato chips — these are some of our most valuable cultural exports (along with what we call Chinese food), and their positive reception around the world seems to prove the truth of our food supremacy. We look down on those other cultures that, the tasty hummus notwithstanding, consume things like stuffed cow eyeballs and fertilized chicken eggs.

This may be why Cracklins are not a widely publicized food. Because if the rest of the world found out about them, we would be the laughing stock of the global community. We have already embarrassed ourselves with our woefully outdated electoral process; food culture is one of our last true bastions of pride. And so, despite their singular weirdness and enormous kitsch value, Cracklins have been kept on the down low in the deep South.

Nevertheless, Cracklins are an important food, as they question the limit of what food actually is. How do you judge what is and isn't a food? Is health and sustenance value a standard? Maybe, but fried, rendered pork fat cannot possibly be any better for you than, say, Play-doh. And yet, outside of a subset of four-to-six year olds, the latter is most definitely not considered a food.

Could flavor be a standard? Should something taste like a "food" for it to be a food? What about eatability? Certainly Cracklins, bite-sized and with a flavor of salty, low-grade pork, meet these standards. But so do leaves and bark, and we rarely call these "foods."

Culture, of course, plays a big role. We call dogs pets, but in some places they call them lunch. We would never see ants as a delectable edible, and yet many indigenous South Americans eat fried hormigas like candy. But while there is a lot of fat in everything we eat, most folks in the United States would never consider eating straight lard.

The "Guinness Book of World Records" holds that a man once ate 24 live cockroaches. But is the mere consumption of something enough to qualify it as a "food"? In Pink Flamingos, Divine eats dog excrement, but this is the very opposite of what we normally consider "food."

Where then, in this panoply of questionable consumables, do Cracklins fall? Just because someone, somewhere, enjoys the taste of fried lard, does that mean we should all accept it as a food? In the end, of course, if we in the United States are to overcome our culinary jingoism, we must start by recognizing those American "foods" that, though revolting to most, are nevertheless consumed with pleasure by a number of our fellow citizens. At the very least, the existence of Cracklins should give us pause before mocking the eating habits of other cultures — after all, which would you rather put in your mouth, raw fish or fried, rendered fat?

— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)