Turn away Vegans and/or PETA types. Last night, my wife and I were doing some late night grocery shopping. As often happens, we divide up and go our separate ways to grab this and that and rejoin along the way. I was in the meat section perusing the ridiculous price increases over the past few years when I came upon a food item I had personally never seen in my citified life time: chicken paws. Freaky looking! Obviously, my non-farming/ranching/sanitized food prep existence has denied me some realities of food prep. But, the Chicken Paws brought me to a halt.
My humor button was pushed, so I put the Chicken Paws in the cart and proceeded to look for my wife. She returned to the cart and in her normal distracted manner didn’t see the Chicken Paws. I casually drew attention to the paws and her response was beyond my wildest prankster expectations!
She became quite verbal, quite audible, quite animated! Wow! Who knew Chicken Paws could draw forth such a response?
I mean we think nothing of frying up some drumbsticks and savoring that fine meat wrapped around that bone. But Chicken Feet or Paws do seem to elicit a mind tweak of sorts. So to give Chicken Paws their supposed due, here is the food, cooking, recipe low down on Chicken Paw usage.
Simply Recipes: “The “Eww” factor of chicken feet I think comes from the fact that chicken feet look a lot like our hands. Silly eh? Especially when we consider that making stock from chicken feet has been a human activity for thousands of years. Most of our grandmothers or great grandmothers used feet in their stock as a matter of fact. They would laugh at us today to see us cringe. Stock made from chicken feet is fabulous, and incredibly good for you with all that gelatin.“
Now no offense to any visitors here from China/Vietnam, but if you are going to try the Chicken Paw recipes, buy locally produced Chicken Paws!
“Chinese police have uncovered an illegal food storage site in China’s southern city of Nanning that reportedly contained chicken feet nearly a half century old. According to the South China Morning Post, more than 20 tonnes of expired meat were seized in the raid, including beef tripe, cartilage, and the aforementioned chicken feet, some of which dated all the way back to 1967. The site was busted back in May, though the details of the operation have only been made public recently.
A Xinhua report cited by the South China Morning Post notes that the chicken feet were smuggled across the border from Vietnam still frozen. Once in China, they were processed with various chemicals, including bleach, to add weight and improve their coloring, making them appear fresh.” (The Telegraph UK) & HuffPo
Chicken paws being disgusting are a great display of our conditioning. If you think about it there’s no difference between chickens and their paws and dogs and their anuses.
LikeLike
No, no you think of that….I will just take a pass on the paws and grab a drumstick!!!
LikeLike
eew – yeuch 😦
LikeLike
I know!
LikeLike
Good job my Vegan daughter didn’t see it! LOL!
LikeLike
my great-grandfather taught me how to eat chicken feet. I still like them, though I certainly don’t go out of the way to make sure I have some.
That said, yeah, meat pricing is getting horrible, but stemming from corn and grain pricing increases.
LikeLike
From a farmer/sustainable living standpoint: The lowdown on chicken feet – for many, the ewww factor comes from the fact that chickens walk around on the aforementioned feet all day.. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, they don’t’ really care where they step, and they also don’t really care where they poop. Combine feet and poop, into the same sentence where the feet are the food item and you’ve got major ewww factor! However, being from the farm/sustainable living background, I can tell you, they are quite delicious. As you see them in the store, the skin on them is not what actually contacts the ground, or the poop. Chicken feet actually have a scaly covering, as well as a sheath over the kwik, similar to a dog’s claw. When a chicken is culled for processing, the feet are cut off, and the scaly sock and claw comes off as one part, like you would take a tube sock off your foot, and all that grossness disappears, resulting in a clean although bony, piece of meat. As Simply Recipes states, they are a delight to add to stocks for the extra gelatin, and, from an Asian standpoint, they’re quite good slow cooked with lots of Asian seasoning. There’s a huge restaurant in Boston’s China Town that serves them up slow-roasted and smothered in a soy sauce dressing. mmmmm, if you can get around the part about them being chicken feet! LOL!
LikeLike