Pork Scratchings Guide: History, Brands and Nutrition

Pork scratchings are pieces of pork rind with the fat still attached, deep fried until hard and seasoned with salt. They come from the Black Country, they carry roughly 42g of protein and 52g of fat per 100g, and most big UK brands are not gluten free because the seasoning contains wheat rusk. You can buy pork scratchings on Amazon or in bulk pub cards on eBay.

Pork scratchings are the last properly old-fashioned pub snack. No extrusion, no potato starch, no reformed anything. Just pig skin, fat, hot lard and salt, sold in a small bag next to the till while everything around them turned into a puffed corn product. This guide covers what they actually are, where they came from, which brands are worth your money, what the label really says, and the gluten problem that catches people out every single time.

What Are Pork Scratchings?

A pork scratching is a piece of pig skin with a layer of subcutaneous fat left underneath, fried until the skin goes hard and the fat renders down. That fat layer is the whole point. Take it away and you get something else entirely.

The cut that matters

Most traditional scratchings use shank rind, taken from the top of the hind leg. Producers favour it because the skin is thicker and the fat sits at roughly the right depth, giving you a hard outer crunch with a softer, richer bite underneath. Mr Porky uses shank rind for its hand cooked line and shoulder rind for its Crispy Strips, which the brand points out has the useful side effect of avoiding stray hairs.

Mr Trotter’s states that 95% of British produced scratchings are made from rind sourced from Danish and other European pigs, mostly Large Whites at around 25 weeks old. Mr Porky’s own label backs up the general point: its pork rind comes from pigs raised, slaughtered and processed in the EU, with the seasoning blended in the UK.

How they are actually cooked

The classic definition is that scratchings are cooked once at a single temperature, which is why they are so hard. Crackling gets a second cook, which puffs the edges slightly and takes some of the danger out of them. Pork crunch, also sold as pork puffs, uses back rind with the fat removed, cooked twice so it inflates into something light and bubbly. Americans call that last one a pork rind.

In practice the lines are blurrier than the textbook version. Mr Porky describes its Original Scratchings as triple cooked, and its Hand Cooked range as double cooked for a dual texture. Treat the once, twice, three times rule as a rough guide to hardness rather than a law.

Scratchings, crackling, crunch and rinds

Here is the quick version, hardest first.

1. Pork scratchings. Shank rind with fat. Hard, dense, heavily porky. The traditional pub snack.
2. Pork crackling. Rind with less fat, cooked twice. Lighter bite, more surface for seasoning to stick to.
3. Pork crunch or pork puffs. Back rind, no fat layer, puffed. Airy, lower fat, easy on your teeth.
4. Pork rinds. The American name for the crunch style, usually sold in much bigger bags.

Worth saying plainly: the crackling on a Sunday roast is not the same thing as a bag of shop crackling. Same word, different product.

Where Pork Scratchings Come From

Scratchings are a Black Country invention, or at least a Black Country tradition. The four boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton still host most of the country’s producers.

Working class thrift, not a recipe

In the 1800s, families across the West Midlands kept a pig in the yard, fed it on scraps and slaughtered it for meat. Nothing got binned. The skin was cut into strips and fried in the animal’s own rendered fat, and what came out was a snack that kept well and carried a huge amount of energy for very little money. Midland Snacks traces the whole category back to exactly that habit.

The butchers took over in the 1930s

By the 1930s, Black Country butchers were making and selling scratchings over the counter, sometimes warm, more often cold in a small paper bag. That is the point where a household by-product became a product. The modern bagged version is not far off what those butchers were selling.

Why the pub connection stuck

Salt, fat and a pint work well together, so scratchings landed in pubs and never left. Midland Snacks reckons around half of all UK pork scratching sales still happen in the Midlands, London and the South East. If you want the wider picture of what else earns a spot on the bar, our guide to the best pub crisps and where to buy them covers the rest of the pub card.

The Main UK Pork Scratching Brands

Some of these are national supermarket brands, some are Black Country outfits selling mainly through pubs and eBay, and a couple are the posh end of the market.

• Mr Porky. The biggest name by a distance. Owned by Tayto Group, produced in Bolton and going since 1960. The Original Scratchings hold a two star Great Taste award and the Crispy Strips picked one up in 2019. Available in most supermarkets, or browse Mr Porky on Amazon.
• Q. A Black Country brand that won the inaugural Pork Idol contest in 2009, when Walsall based Ace Pub Supplies took first place for its Q Pork Crackling. Sold mainly as pub cases and hanging bags. Full range on our Q Pork Scratchings category page, including the Q Pork Crunch Original 8x30g carded pack.
• Midland Snacks. Traditional hand cooked scratchings in 40g and 70g packs, sold heavily through wholesalers. The seasoning is effectively identical to Mr Porky’s.
• Snaffling Pig. The one that dragged the category upmarket. Nick Coleman started it in 2014 with £500, and in 2016 he and Andy Allen took it onto series 14 of Dragons’ Den, walking out with £70,000 from Nick Jenkins for 20% of the business. Flavoured crackling rather than hard traditional scratchings.
• Awfully Posh. Premium crackling and puffs, stocked as a bar snack rather than a supermarket buy. See the Awfully Posh range here.
• Serious Pig. Small batch snacking crackling aimed squarely at the craft beer crowd. Serious Pig on One Pound Crisps.
• Mr Tubs. Sells specifically on a gluten free, keto and paleo platform, which matters more than it sounds. More on that below.

For pub cases and mixed cartons, eBay usually beats the supermarkets on price per gram. Have a look at what is listed for pork scratchings in bulk on eBay.

What Is Actually In the Bag

This is where scratchings get interesting, because the nutrition profile looks nothing like a bag of crisps.

Typical values

Mr Porky publishes the following for its Original Scratchings, per 100g:

• Energy: 646kcal
• Fat: 52.7g, of which saturates 18.4g
• Carbohydrate: 0.4g, of which sugars 0.2g
• Protein: 42.5g
• Salt: 3.1g

Midland Snacks comes in at 653kcal with 44.3g protein. Q lists 630kcal with 48.9g protein and 46.6g fat. The numbers move around a little by brand, but the shape stays the same: very high protein, very high fat, almost no carbohydrate.

A typical 40g bag of Mr Porky Original therefore gives you roughly 258 calories, 21g of fat and 17g of protein. That is more protein than most people expect from a bar snack.

Keto, low carb and the protein angle

Because pig skin contains next to no carbohydrate, scratchings became a fixture of Atkins, keto and carnivore diets. Mr Porky now markets its Puffs directly at that audience: 66.4g protein and 29.4g fat per 100g, with 0.3g of carbs, seasoned with rice flour rather than wheat. If you want the protein without the fat load of traditional scratchings, pork crunch and puffs are the better buy.

None of that makes them a health food. The protein in pork skin is mostly collagen, which is not a complete protein source, and the saturated fat and salt are both high.

The salt problem

At 3.1g of salt per 100g, a 40g bag carries about 1.24g of salt. The NHS recommends adults stay under 6g a day, so one bag is roughly a fifth of your daily allowance before you have eaten anything else. If you are weighing up snack choices generally, we went through the numbers in are crisps a healthy snack.

Also worth noting: Mr Porky prints a warning on pack that its scratchings are only suitable for those with strong healthy teeth, and that despite best efforts, the odd small bone may remain. That is not a gimmick. Dentists genuinely see scratching related fractures.

Are Pork Scratchings Gluten Free?

Usually not, and this catches people out constantly.

Pork rind and salt are naturally gluten free. The problem is the seasoning. Mr Porky, Midland Snacks and Q all use a blend that contains rusk, which is made from wheat flour. All three list cereals containing gluten in their allergy advice. A snack made of nothing but pig skin ends up unsuitable for coeliacs because of a wheat filler in the flavouring.

Some brands avoid it. Snaffling Pig lists Perfectly Salted, Salt ‘N’ Vinegar, Low & Slow BBQ, Hot to Trot Habanero, Mighty Colman’s Mustard and Pig of Doom as gluten free, while Black Pepper and Marvellous Maple contain gluten. Mr Tubs and The Oink Company both build their range around gluten free seasoning. Mr Porky Puffs use rice flour instead of rusk.

Recipes change, so always read the pack rather than trusting a list online, including this one. If you shop this way regularly, gluten free pork scratchings on Amazon is the safer starting point, and our UK guide to gluten free crisps covers the rest of the snack aisle.

The VAT Quirk Nobody Talks About

Here is a genuinely odd one. Pork scratchings are zero rated for VAT. Crisps are not.

Also Worth Reading

Walkers Crinkles: Discontinued Again and What to Buy Instead

TL;DR: Yes, Walkers Crinkles are discontinued. Walkers confirmed it in April 2026, having stopped production the previous February. This is the second…

14 min read Read article →

HMRC’s own guidance at VFOOD8160 lists the liability of common snacks. Potato crisps are standard rated. So are Monster Munch, Wotsits and ordinary Pringles, because they count as savoury products made by swelling cereals. Pork scratchings are zero rated, along with poppadoms, tortilla chips, Twiglets, Skips and Wheat Crunchies.

The logic is that the 1994 VAT Act excepts potato snacks, swollen cereal snacks and salted nuts from zero rating. Nobody wrote fried pig skin into the list, so it escapes the 20%. That is why pub wholesalers list scratchings as no VAT while the crisps next to them carry it. It also explains why brands fight so hard in tribunal over which category they fall into, as Walkers found out when it lost its Sensations Poppadoms case in 2025.

How to Buy Pork Scratchings Online

Supermarket single bags are the most expensive way to eat scratchings. Pub cards and cases are dramatically cheaper per gram, and they keep for months in a dry cupboard.

For traditional Black Country scratchings, the eBay sellers shipping direct from Walsall and the surrounding area are usually the best value. Browse Q Pork Scratchings listings on eBay or Midland Snacks pub cards. For flavoured crackling and gift packs, Amazon has the wider range, so start with pork crackling on Amazon.

You can see everything we have reviewed in the meat snacks category, and if you are stocking a bar rather than a cupboard, the wholesale crisps for pubs section is the one you want. Fancy something with a kick alongside them? Our best spicy crisps UK ranking pairs well with a cold pint too.