Chicken cracklins recipe

Directions

1. Mince up all the pure yellow chicken fat you can find -- there's usually a nice big chunk on the tail.
2. Throw it with a few tablespoons of water into a heavy-bottomed pot over high heat to get it going. When it comes up to a boil, turn it down and keep the heat low to let everything render slowly.
3. Cut the skin into something like half-inch strips and dump them into the pot, seasoning lightly with salt. Not much will happen for a bit. The skin will turn gray. Gross.
4. Go about your business. Give a stir every 5 or 10 minutes. Eventually you will see a little color around the edges of the pot, and around the edges of the cracklins. If at this point the skins haven't rendered enough fat to nearly cover them, pour in a little vegetable oil to help them out. Stir again, being sure to scrape the bottom.
5. When the strips of skin start to get sticky, they'll want to clump up and it's time to get nosy. Keep stirring every minute or two so they don't permanently stick together. Be merciless in breaking them apart -- if all that skin was meant to be in one piece, the chicken would've found a way to stay alive.
6. Around this time, you'll start to see foam coming to the surface and some real color developing as the skin gives up its water and begins to crisp.
7. Eventually, you'll notice that the skin doesn't mind coming back apart when you give it a stir. It'll start making a beautiful, delicate, sandpapery sound. That's the sound of cracklins. Keep it going for a while yet; there's still a lot of water inside the skin that needs to come out. Taste one every once in a while until they're crisp, not chewy. (At this point, you can turn the heat up if you're impatient, but be careful to not burn them.)
8. When they're crisp and light all the way through, drain them on paper towels and season with another sprinkle of salt, if need be. Try not to eat them all right then. Or go ahead.