Chicharrón cochabambino

As tradition built it

Chicharrón cochabambino

Cochabamba's Day of Chicha and Chicharrón, declared by municipal ordinance, 2021

Ingredients

• 4kg pork, shoulder and chop cuts
• 2kg pork belly
• 2 potato
• to serve mote
• 2 to 3 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• ½ tbsp cumin
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• a small piece, to taste orange peel, a small piece, depending on the cook
• 1½ cups chicha, or the juice of 4 limes, as the souring element

Method

1. Wash the pork belly's skin and rind, cut into pieces and simmer 5 to 6 hours until soft (this stage can be done the day before).
2. Set the pork, shoulder and chop cuts, in a separate pot with water to cover, salted and seasoned with the black pepper, cumin, cinnamon sticks and orange peel, the chicha or lime juice added as the souring element.
3. Cook over high heat, stirred constantly with a wooden spoon, until every drop of that water has evaporated and the meat begins to fry in its own rendered fat.
4. Serve hot with two potatoes boiled in their skins, mote to accompany, and red llajwa.

What a modern chef changes

Sous vide render, concentrated top note

Rung 04

Method

1. Hold the confit-then-render technique exactly as tradition performs it, poach the skin, then evaporate the meat's own water down to a self-frying finish, since this is already the correct two-stage method a modern kitchen would design from scratch.
2. Cook the pork belly sous vide first, to render its fat evenly through the joint, then finish it in the same dry pan tradition specifies, for a shorter, more controlled final render than starting from raw meat.
3. Dehydrate the orange peel or reduce the chicha to a syrup in the spice grinder's own concentrating spirit, and finish it over the plated chicharrón as a bright top note rather than folding it in raw at the start.