Sunday lunch in Austria sounds like this: the crack of a knife breaking through roast pork skin so crisp it splinters. That sound travels from the kitchen to the dining room, and everyone at the table sits up a little straighter because they know what's coming. Schweinsbraten mit Kruste is the dish that holds the Austrian Sunday together, and it has for as long as anyone can remember.

I learned to make this roast from watching Gretel and my grandmother Eva argue about it. Gretel scored her skin in tight diamonds and rubbed coarse salt into every groove. Eva preferred wider crosshatching and insisted on rubbing garlic paste under the skin before salting. They went back and forth like this for years, two women who agreed on everything except pork crackling. I use both their methods now and the roast is better for it.

The technique is simple but it rewards you for paying attention. You need good pork with a thick, even layer of skin and fat. You score it, salt it generously, rub it with garlic and caraway, and then you roast it low and slow in a pan with root vegetables and dark beer. The beer becomes the gravy. The fat renders down and bastes the meat from inside. And the skin, if you've done your job, turns into something that shatters between your teeth and tastes of salt and caraway and pure satisfaction.

At my restaurant in Salzburg, we serve this with Stöcklkraut, a slow-braised white cabbage with caraway and a splash of vinegar that cuts right through the richness. Bread dumplings on the side to catch the gravy. It's not a complicated plate. It doesn't need to be. This is good Austrian home cooking at its most honest, and when the crackling is right, nothing else on the table matters.