I helped a friend slaughter and process 30 chickens this past weekend. The difference between a farm-raised semi-free-range chicken and what you buy in the store is considerable, and it’s well worth the effort. The process is gruesome, to a certain degree–there’s just no way around that. But it is an honest way to eat meat, as I see it, and if you hunt, it’s more or less the same process. My friend has worked on refining her operation, and we also had the help of a couple students, which made the work of scalding, defeathering (in an amazing spinning-rubbery-finger machine), cutting off the feet and heads, eviscerating, washing, and cooling the processed birds in ice water. These chickens were Red Rangers, and fairly large; I took eight of them home, along with all the feet, livers, and hearts. I’ll look forward to cooking them over the next year (as I made room in my freezer, I found two from the last time I helped slaughter, so I’ll be cooking those soon). Meanwhile, I had to deal with the chicken feet–something nobody is much interested in (many people discard or compost them). I’m zealous in trying to use every part of any animal I kill, and I treasure the bright yellow feet for use in stock, which I use either for soup, or for making aspic, or холодец [kholodets], a favorite dish of my Russian friends. Either way, you’ve got to deal with the feet, which is a bit tricky, and a bit time-consuming. I did some searching on-line for methods, because I had a hard time with my first batch, and I didn’t find exact information, so I include here what I learned about preparing chicken feet from trial and error, along with a recipe for making stock (I’ll post the recipe for aspic later).
Scalding the feet:
Get a large pot of water boiling, and immerse the feet in the water for NO MORE THAN SIXTY SECONDS, remove from water and plunge in ice water. Do it all quickly, because if you do boil them too long, you will start to cook the feet themselves, and the outer yellow skin will fuse with the flesh underneath, making it really hard to remove the skins. Once the feet have cooled, use a small pair of pliers to pull out the claws, and then peel the feet. The yellow skin should come off fairly easily. Once you have the feet cleaned, you can seek out some more elaborate recipes, or simply make stock, which makes a wonderful base for other soups.
Basic chicken stock
18-24 chicken feet
2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
3-4 large carrots, washed and chopped
one bulb of garlic
2-3 parsnips, washed and chopped
bay leaves
peppercorns
Place all ingredients in large stock pot, simmer for 10-12 hours, strain through fine mesh or cheesecloth. Let cool, and use in recipes. When it cools, it should be almost solid, like jello. I freeze it in pints or quartz (in ziploc bags), for later use.
Asian chicken stock
18-24 chicken feet
3 scallions
one 1.5 inch piece of ginger, sliced
Place all ingredients in large stock pot, simmer for 10-12 hours, strain as above. Let cool, and use in Asian recipes. Again, I freeze and store this for later use.
FoodIowa 