Prepare crispy chicken skin baked in the oven or fried on the cooktop. The results are the same. Tasty, crispy, flavorful snack to please us anytime!

Chicken skin or in general skin is frequently frowned upon as part of any edible food. Be it fruit, vegetables or meat.

Just think about how many people can’t stand a piece of skin on their apples even if it has most of the nutrients of the whole fruit. Vegetables are even more prone to lose their skin during the dinner preparation process.

Apart from the inedible outer layer peeling makes sense sometimes. After all no one wants to chew on soil from a lazily washed carrot not gnaw on leathery skins.

However, most of the time we peel things out of pure habit not because of necessity loosing valuable part of our food.

It seems like, we tend to think that skin is a sort of packaging too that is only there to safeguard the inner goods for our health and the benefits of grocery stores. Considering that 40% of all pesticides and harmful bacteria can be washed away with a simple cold rinse and double of that much by peeling, we are somewhat close to the truth.

Unfortunately, keeping harmful things outside of our system isn’t enough to stay healthy. Our complex biological ecosystem, called body needs plenty of nourishment to stay on the track which means the health benefits of forcing down the skins, outweighs the risks of an occasional gulp of pesticides.

Luckily, chickens are not grown on trees or plucked from the soil. Their natural cover protects them from all the harmful things we would loath to consume. Their not so natural but nowadays very popular cover, the plastic bags, also protect them from the harsh reality of the bacteria and virus jammed outside world until we get them on our chopping boards.

Some even got so lucky as to be bathed in chlorine to kill 90% of harmful bacteria that could be present on their skin due to poor hygiene measures in the production line. So, chickens should be as clean as death or our drinking water when they got to us.

For some unknown reason, we still throw away their skin if they aren’t made into crispy roasted chickens. Well, not all of us of course.

Chicken skin, the originally chewy and gooey, fat dripping piece of thing can be turned into a delicious snack that everyone loves (given that it isn’t widely advertised as chicken skin before they taste it first).

It seems though that not only some fanatic foodies, who had been fed with obscure animal parts by their Gypsy, Jew, Third World country grandmother, are raging about eating skins nowadays.

KFC is getting on the chicken skin selling business in various countries including the US, as well. We’ll see how far they fare with the idea but if those are as tasty as their chickens, we yet to see another conquest similar to the country wide or rather worldwide celebrated chicken wings.

The hardest part of preparing the crispy chicken skin is skinning the chicken. If we have a whole chicken, it’s fairly easy just to start pulling the skin off from the neck down to the bottom and legs. The wings are pretty hard to master so it’s worth to cut them off beforehand and use them for something else. Like fried chicken wings or baked chicken wings.

Pieces of chicken are much harder to skin and albeit not impossible, it requires a bit more effort and practice to master. So does cutting them up into any form. A sharp knife or lacking that a pair of kitchen scissors may be our best friend in this almost impossible task.

Crispy chicken skins can be made in the oven, deep fryer or in a plain pan flavored with whatever spices or herbs we can muster from our cupboard. It tastes great with plain salt just as well as plain slated chips or as Brits say crisps do.

It takes a while to get them done as we have to render all the fat out of the skin slowly, resulting in hard crispy pieces of salty pleasures.

Ingredients:

- 1 whole Chicken skin
- ½ teaspoon Salt
- Optional:
- ½ teaspoon Black pepper
- 1 clove Garlic
- ½ teaspoon Paprika
- …

How to make:

Cut off the chicken wings.
Pull the skin off the chicken. Start by picking up the skin at the back of the neck and pulling it down halfway the chicken’s back towards the bottom of the carcass.
Turn it around and pull the skin back at the breasts as well all the way it’s possible. Don’t worry if the skin rips but try to maintain it as whole as possible as it’s easier to pull it off whole than in pieces.
Flip the carcass again to pull the skin off from the back towards the legs.
Pull off the skin from the leg.
Cut the skin up to stripes.
Or even smaller pieces.
Put the skin into a small pan on medium heat.
As the fat starts to get rendered out, lower the heat and stir the skins every now and then preventing them to stick and burn down.
It takes about 20 – 30 minutes to get all the fat out.
The skin is ready when the fat ceases bubbling and tapping the skins with a spoon sounds hard as ticking with our nails on the spoon.
Flavoring can be done a couple of minutes before taking the skin out to dry. Throw fresh herbs like crushed garlic along with the skin or wait until taking them out and sprinkle with salt and spices.
Take them out to dry and cool a bit before serving.

Enjoy!

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