Pork fatback is a staple in traditional cuisine of the southern United States. As its name suggests, the cut comes from the pig's back -- a strip of about an inch thick situated between the skin and the meat. Pork fatback can be used to make lard and fried pork rinds, or it can be cut thin and wrapped around other pieces of meat or used in terrine and pate molds.
Fatback is a cut of pork, typically taken off the back of a pig. Its name perfectly describes it. This cut of flesh is virtually all fat, and can be used very much like bacon. Yet unlike bacon, fatback contains very little to absolutely no meat, and in uncooked form resembles all-white strips of bacon.
Selecting and Buying
Preparation and Use
It may flavor dishes like collard greens, be strained to make lard, fried into crispy strips called cracklings, or used to wrap around other types of meat to retain freshness, called barding.
One of the most well known uses of fatback is rendering it into lard, which is where the fat has been melted to remove impurities and then re-set, producing the snow-white shortening beloved by bakers, potato-roasters, and other fans of the delicious. Cured with spiced salt mixtures and left to hang, fatback turns into the highly prized Italian all-fat salume lardo (try it on pizza, famously, at a number of Mario Batali's restaurants). The French like to use fatback to enrich terrines and pâtés, or cut into ribbons and added to game birds under the skin to protect the lean meat. The French also practice a technique called, literally, larding, where strips of pork fat are actually sown into meat with a specialized needle. Pork rinds, scratchings, cracklings, and chicharrones can all be made by deep frying fatback until the attached skin becomes golden brown and crunchy.