4d ago

I find out what chicharron is in Peru.

In Spain, the Philippines, Panama, Colombia, Guatemala, everywhere I've ever heard the word, chicharron means "deep-fried pork skin", but the comments below and wikipedia will make me pay more attention in the future to chicharron. Especially in Bolivia, where chicharron is ribs. whaaat.

In at least Lima, chicharron means "breaded deep-fried fish strips".

I was dumbfounded yesterday when i found out.

I'm found dumb fairly often. I cannot confirm whether this is a Lima-only idiosyncrasy or if there were fish strips in Cusco that I never got to try because i was avoiding "chicharron".

I like peruvian chicharron, I'm not a huge fan of pork cracklings.

17 comments

That looks fantastic, and I'm not a fan of fish!
- It was fun to try all this stuff, and I'm very glad I learned about peruvian chicharron and tiradito but I'm going to try to find a more street-level ceviche place, this was a little upscale and the sauces didn't quite match up to the ritz for me.
  I need to find a grandma ceviche place.
There's a pretty authentic Venezuelan place near me whose chicharron is deep fried skinless pork belly, so there's definitely regional variations.
- Thank you, i was confused by your comment and then realized i wrote "skin" instead of "belly".
  It's often pork belly, although the skin always sticks out to me because i have this image of singed hair from fresh Philippines chicharrón
  
  I've absolutely ordered chicharron from a Mexican place where it was just pork skin with a green sauce. It can be tricky to know exactly what you are getting just based on the name.
What is on the upper left and right of photo, upper right looks like sashimi/raw fish maybe?
- Upper left is ceviche, upper right is tiradito, which is basically Peruvian sashimi, often served with aji, a blended rocoto pepper cream sauce
  
  Was going to guess upper left was raw too but tough to tell with sauce. Both look fantastic. Can imagine this with a crisp beer or 5.
It's what it means where I live, in the Bible Belt USA.
- I am loving finding all of this out.
  Bible belt chicharron is pork belly or fried fish strips?
  
  Pork belly, or just pork skin if you buy it in packages at shops, usually. Unless it's an ethnic market, food truck, or shop, then it's either/or/both, depending on the vendor. The best is pork belly, sold at little stores or markets with a little restaurant or hot deli, where they make their own, and own tortillas, salsas, and everything else. Those are usually bagged in brown paper, but some shops use plastic bags and bread ties. Or did. A lot of those places are closed, now, sadly.

17 comments