Home Made Pork Dripping etc

I was one of those children who was bought up with slabs of bread slathered in Pork Dripping and it was yummy. What you say eating fat on bread how gross. Now stop. The Pork Dripping I am speaking about bears no resemblance to what is sold as Pork Dripping today. It was thick with gravy and had a lot of flavour and the gravy or jelly bit was the best. When we used to come to Peterborough from Uppingham when I was a child we always used to go to the market and mum used to get a portion of the dripping. It used to be sold from big metal vats the size of a very large preserving pan. Sadly, to date I haven't been able to find anywhere that sells proper dripping like this. No doubt it is subject to some law or another.

However, all is not lost. My partner's mum shared one of her family secrets with me on how to acquire something as near as what my mum used to buy for us as children. That is when cooking a large joint of pork make sure you use a very large and deep pan for cooking it in. Now I don't use salt for making the crackling go crisp, but I use heat. I turn the oven on to Gas mark 7 for approximately the first hour of cooking and this makes a very crisp moorish crackling which is not overloaded with salt. Pork is very salty anyway so why add more. Then turn down to about Gas Mark 4/5. Then add a couple of large packs of lard and let them melt and the meat juices seep into the fat. Leave for near enough the duration of the cooking period however if there is a lot and it makes the tray unsafe drain some out periodically into a large bowl. Leave to cool and store in the fridge.

But why do I need Pork Dripping? For Roast Potatoes of course. I either use this bowl of dripping we have it on bread but mainly it is used for roasting potatoes. If I don't use Pork Dripping I use Goose fat. Both give excellent results