I've seen exactly one "Americas test kitchen" video.

It claimed with confidence that the only way to make pork skin crunchy (ie into crackling) is to fry the pork after it's been roasted (ie turn it upside down in a pan of oil/fat)

I didn't even watch the rest of the video. I don't know if they're catering to people who can't work the knob on an oven or if they themselves are just incompetent but that one claim was enough for me to never watch their shit again.

No idea what video you're talking about, but you are likely misremembering. They do a ton of experimentation to optimize recipes and explain the food science behind it. They would never make a pat statement like that.

Kenji used to be on ATK many years ago and has visited them more recently.

They've been operating in one form or another for like 20 years and their whole deal is experimenting to find optimal recipes. Kenji Lopez started on that show and has guest appeared recently.

I saw your original reply, claiming I "misremembered".

It took me about 30 seconds to find this: https://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/8116-crispy-slow...

That isn't the video I saw, but they still happily fry it:

> Finally, we fry the skin, which causes it to dramatically puff up and crisp.

I don't care how long they've been doing whatever it is they do. If you need to put pork in oil to make the skin crispy you suck at cooking.

Here is the video, right at the point where they make their absolutely ridiculous fucking claim:

> We tried to get that skin crisp in a hot oven and under the broiler, and it just didn't work. The only way to get it crisp was using hot oil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ucXLDX_xrE&t=390s

No need to apologise, I'll just take you deleting your original reply as apology enough.