Joel Salatin's instruction videos

[bibliophile birds]

Quote:
i just finished reading Joel's Pastured Poultry Profits book. it was a good read, for anyone who hasn't read it before. anyway, he says in it (somewhere) that they used to process the gizzards but, in the long run, it took too much time (which cost money) for something that most customers didn't care about. he said a few customers do want them, so he makes sure to include a few with their orders.

 

[3KillerBs]

Quote:
i just finished reading Joel's Pastured Poultry Profits book. it was a good read, for anyone who hasn't read it before. anyway, he says in it (somewhere) that they used to process the gizzards but, in the long run, it took too much time (which cost money) for something that most customers didn't care about. he said a few customers do want them, so he makes sure to include a few with their orders.

The only time I processed any chickens -- just 4 birds as a lesson to teach me how -- I found that the gizzards were a royal pain to clean. I don't eat them, just use them in the stock pot, so I doubt it would be worth my time to bother with.

 

[EGGTASKTIC]

I must say the gizzards are for the stock pot at our house also. I draw the line at using the feet-- even peeled I do no want them in my stock pot.
If I am processing for the B-Q and the birds are around 4 lbs I dispose of the gizzards. The heart and livers get thrown into a bag for dog food treats.
Of course what ever hits the ground is grabbed by the nearest free-ranger.

 

[doubled]

i love fried gizzards but by the time you clean them, buy the buttermilt to soak them, soak them, bread them buy the oil to fry them in and fry them, you might as well have bought a pound of them for $2.99 already made. now, i'm not suggesting KFC every time you want a fried chicken meal cause nothing beats home made fried chicken especially from your own bird. but it takes alot of birds to get a pound of gizzards...

 

[dancingbear]

I don't know how you guys are cleaning your gizzards, but I slice through the muscle ridge, turning the gizzard as I go, about 3/4 of the way around. Open it up, dump out the gravel, peel the yellow inner membrane out, and rinse. It takes about 15 seconds. Since you're killing and cleaning a whole bird anyway, it's not all that much work to save the gizzards.

Even if you don't eat them, they are just as nice for the dogs as the hearts and livers.

If you toss them in a bowl of ice water as you go, (when you're killing a bunch of birds anyway) you have a pretty good-sized batch if gizzards by the time you're done, if you want to have a batch of gizzards alone. Sometimes I do that for my DH, he loves fried gizzards. But usually I put them inside the chicken's body cavity before I freeze it, along with the neck and heart. I feed the livers and spleens, and kidneys to the dogs and cats, the rest I cook right along with the rest of the chicken when I cook it. When I fry chicken, that gives DH a nice little treat to run in and snatch off the platter while waiting to the rest of the meal.

I haven't soaked mine in buttermilk, but I think I'll try that on the ones from older birds. I keep buttermilk to make biscuits anyway, and I keep oil to fry with, it's not like it takes a whole jug of either, or like it takes an special trip to the store just for those things to cook the gizzards. I can use the buttermilk to make biscuits after I take the gizzards out of it.