Is chicken feet the avocados of meats? Low carb, keto, paleo, gluten and sugar free, highly undervalued meal prepared as a stew.

One of the most prominent drawbacks of the industrialized food production is the lack of variety. With ready-made food we gain time but loose control. With ready-made ingredients, we are offered a never before seen possibility but loose the force to be creative with them.

Sure enough, not many people want to get back to skinning rabbits or cleaning chickens in their kitchens as a Sunday morning routine. Many would like to have the health benefits of home breed livestock or organic vegetables, though.

Outsourcing the butchering means, we get perfect looking ingredients that are prepared to please the most common of demands. The removed parts then go to fodder or exported to lucrative markets like in this case China.

As France is the biggest importer of fatty liver China is of chicken feet. It imports almost half a million tons yearly to please its population snacking habit.

Being the biggest doesn’t mean that it’s the only one. Many countries all over the world enjoy chicken feet in many forms from Brazil through Europe to the Philippines.

In some countries, it is made into soups or stews and enjoyed as a main meal while in other places they are preferred fried or grilled and snacked on it happily while strolling on the streets.

Unfortunately or not, we are far from switching up the hot dog hawkers with chicken feet stands, yet as even getting the cleaned chicken feet at the local butcher is a challenge sometimes.

Those, who have a farm or at least a yard with chickens running around, can count themselves lucky in terms of having access to fresh quality food source anytime they wish for. Given that they are ready for getting their hands dirty with it.

Grocery stores and butchers generally sell ready to prepare, already cleaned produce so we don’t have to bother with that but if we raise our own, we have to clean our own too.

Cleaning the chickens from the feathers and getting them ready for butchering takes longer than the whole cutting up process but one couldn’t exist without the other.

Luckily, the feet don’t have any feather to get rid of but it still needs a bit of scrubbing and submerging in boiling hot water to facilitate the removal of the upper skin layer. Not to mention cutting the claws off as those things have very little use for any dishes we make except when cooking for our pets.

Most of the edible tissue on the chicken leg consist of tendons and skin without any muscle which stands in sharp contrast to the chicken breast that is all muscle and nothing else.

The texture is similar to pork feet when prepared as a stew providing a gelatinous sticky dish that can’t be eaten with straight back for sure.

Well, maybe we can keep the books on our head but the knives and forks will definitely be unnecessary ornaments at the dinner table. Embrace sticky fingers and oil dripped table cloths and get ready for a tasty ride on chicken legs.

Ingredients

½ cup / 150ml Oil or lard
2 Onions (diced)
1 teaspoon Salt
1 Tomato
1 teaspoon Paprika
1lb / 500g Chicken feet
1 cup Water

How to make Chicken feet

Heat the oil in a pan then add the diced onion and salt. Saute the onion until it gets a glassy / translucent look.
Add the tomato and paprika.
Add the chicken feet and mix everything together.
Pour water until the pan’s content is half submerged in water then place the lid on.
Bring it to boil and simmer it for 40 minutes. Check for water every now and then. Fill it up if its too low.

Enjoy!

If chicken feet was a joy check out some other mouthwatering happy feet that can be served at the table:

Star this recipe!