on a number of occasions we have run a Crisp Chicken Skin appetizer with Malt Vinegar Aioli...salty, cruchy, delicious

One of my favorite appetizers is the crispy hominy. The dish, which costs only $6, features fried hominy with pickled red onion, lime juice and pork skin cracklin'.

We buy whole hogs for the restaurant, so adding the skin to dishes is another way to use the whole animal for true nose to tail cooking.

Because it Tastes so frkn good! Great way to incorporate crispy and salty textures to a dish.

Crispy skin: either super delicious or horribly disgusting. I'm hoping
that it's done well, but usually fear that a few places will execute it
well, and the rest... just try not to gag...

Skin is the best part to "pick on"...who doesn't love crisp chicken skin or pulling on the skin of the Thanksgiving Turkey. I love the crisp flavorful skin crust of braised Pork Shanks when they come out of the oven...full of rosemary, orange and garlic.
At NOMA, we had Chicken Skin from the skim of the chicken stock dehydrated and made into a canape style sandwich. But my favorite way is Chicken skin vinaigrette for a salad or to dress an amazing risotto.

I think it is excellent! The more pieces of the animal we use the better.
We've made cracklin', testa, cotecchino sausage, ciccioli, and most
recently, pig skin marmalade. Delicious and porky.

Finding a use for everything in the kitchen and making it delicious
is always a virtuous act. Puffing fish skin like a pork rind is a fun
technique and a good application for texture.

I think it's very interesting that skin is making an appearance! I usually
crisp them up and use them as garnishes - and, of course, I snack on a few.

We have two items using pork skin that have stayed on the menu since we opened. (Actually they're the only two items that have stayed on). Our house salad is very simple - organic greens tossed in a sherry vinaigrette topped with chicharrones. We boil, chill, scrape, dehydrate and then fry the pork skin to make the chicharrones. We toss them with a little bacon fat vinaigrette, chopped parsley, and a lot of salt, and they stand in for croutons on the salad. In the Rieger Pork Soup we use the chicharrones to float on top of the soup and we melt gruyere over them.
We also have a cool skin garnish on one of our new menu items - the Arctic Char. We crust the fish with pumpernickel crumbs and ground caraway seed, so we remove the skin since its going to have a crunchy crust on it. At the same time, I love char skin and didn't want to waste it, so we save it for the garnish. We pickle the skin with white wine vinegar, mustard seed, coriander, garlic and chile, then dry it off and fry it in a light tempura batter. The pickle flavor comes through and cuts the oily fish flavor of the skin, and the tempura gives it a great crunch.

It's a natural extension of the resurgent interest in whole animal cooking. Since we only work with whole pigs, chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, etc we always have skin on hand and we're always concocting interesting ways to use it and make it tasty and interesting. Whatever the animal, crackling is a big one for us. We use hog crackling in our spoonbread, duck crackling on our duck dish, and most chicken dishes usually get dusted with crushed chicken crackling for crispness and you can't beat the richness it imparts. As an added bonus, the rendering process leaves delicious fat behind that we can use for all sorts of things - gumbo roux, biscuits, finishing sauces, etc. It's true for some chefs it's a product of the "weird animal part" (there are no "weird" animal parts, really) trend, but for those of us with serious whole-animal programs, it's a necessity.