Question for Paleo people.

[Branlin]

Pork rinds?

We bought a couple bags of cracklins a but back and I fried them up in a pan with oil. Shit turned into mini pork rinds. Was figuring that rinds without sugar added would almost fit onto the paleo radar.

Next question - Has anyone ever bought the buckets of pork pellets for making rinds?

I used to raise and process hogs for home use "in an earlier life."

The actual definition of "cracklin's" is the residue left over from rendering lard. Meaning, taking pieces of pork fat and cooking them down until you get the browned residue, or "cracklin's," and the clear liquid called "lard." (beef "lard" is called tallow). It really stinks the house up when rendering, but lard or tallow are the best type of oil to use for cooking. I make my tallow from grass-fed buffalo fat.

The cracklins I see in bags with chips, pretzels, etc. I don't think are true cracklins.

Some people call the dark brown crisped skin when roasting a hog "cracklins", which is also incorrect.

So, it's hard to answer your question without knowing what store bought "cracklins" actually are.

As for "paleo" food: anything that humans ate before agriculture was invented around 10,000 years ago would be paleo food. I'm not a fanatic about it, but to me bacon, ham, or any cured meat would not be considered "paleo", although any other kind of meat would be.

[Branlin]

Am I the only one who thinks the paleo diet stuff is just a fad?

<-- not an expert

IMO, the term "paleo lifestyle" IS a fad. However all it means is eating and living like we did in our natural state -- before agriculture.

Humans have been around for about 3 million years, and we lived "natural" for about 2,990,000 years. Going by that, I don't think living in our natural state is a "fad."

[John Shaw]

UPDATE -

Invented a hot dog bun.

3/4 cup almond flour (I'm making my own on demand because we're getting raw almonds for 3.69 a pound at Randazzos. Buying three or four bags a week to stock up at those prices.)

2 tablespoons coconut flour

4 eggs

1 tablespoon oil of choice. (I used lard)

1 teaspoon of baking powder. (Get the cream of tartar kind rather than the starch kind I guess)

Mix all that shit up and dump it equally into a mini loaf pan. Ours holds four little loafs. Then actually stick your hot dogs right in there on top. Bake 'em at 350 for 30 minutes.

Shit was so cash. It looked like the bread was growing right around the dog. Form fitting and shit. Next time I'll take pictures. Tasted like a cross between a hot dog + bun and a corn dog. Adding some salt would prolly make it more corn-dog-like. Was a tiny bit dry so I'll have to figure out a way to keep moisture in or something.

Will prolly fine tune it so there's even less bun, but that was the pan we could find to try it out with. Couls have prolly made six dogs worth of bun with this recipe.

[Turd Ferguson]

 Was a tiny bit dry so I'll have to figure out a way to keep moisture in or something.

Try baking it just a few minutes less next time. Makes alot of difference. I used to have this bread maker that had reccomended cooking times in the little book that came with it and when I used that on sourdough bread, it came out dry as a desert, utter shit, so I knocked 3 minutes off, and it came out perfect.

[BonerJoe]

John, try seperating the eggs and whipping up the eggwhites to stiff peaks. Makes a more fluffier bun-like texture.