What do you do with.....

[gumbii]

you guys don't eat the heart, liver, and gizzards...???? they're the best... my mom would've beat me up if she saw me throwing them out.. LOL...


us silly mexicans...


we haven't eaten a processed chicken since my mom passed away, and i can't wait to get at one of these juicy giant cochin roo's... LOL... my friends (city folk) get weirded out when i tell them that i'm gonna eat the chickens... they act like i'm going to eat the family dog... but i will also try to use every part of the bird... might use feathers for an art piece or something later on... i guess the intestines are going to the trash...

 

[elizabethbinary]

You guys are even able to use the bile duct and tract? My husband throws that out but saves the stomach for the dogs and cleans it out. I keep the livers and necks to cook with. Heads I WANT to keep or give to the dogs but my husband has some chicken-head respect thing and we have to dispose of those. I want to put feet in my stocks but it creeps the boy out as well. Gizzard goes to the dogs, too. (same with lungs, testicles and heart, which I just love to grab and go, "HA YOUR HEART, SHE IS MINE!"... but hey, I get bored easy).

 

[annaraven]

Quote:
My daughter *loves* eating the heart. It's her favorite part. Chicken livers - well, I just made Tajarin Albese tonight with chicken livers. (Yeah it suggests truffles but ignore that part. It's good anyways.) Awesome meal. Chicken livers are great. The gizzard and lungs and necks are great for stock. I've heard the feet are good for stock too. The head and intestines, I would probably toss though.

 

[wolftracks]

Quote:
Heck I buy gizzards, hearts and livers.

I save every decent feather I can get my hands on.

I haven't ever processed my birds but will this year and I'll mix the other inside (cause just yucky) in with some of the gourmet dog and cat treats I make.

 

[justbugged]

This year I am going to chop the hearts and feed them to the fish in the tank. I have a fire eel that will eat heart meat. I can remember fighting as kids over who got the heart to eat. Some of the livers and gizzards will go to the dogs, and so will the tips of the wings. In the past 2 years DH has mostly buried the heads, guts and blood in the garden with paving stones over the spot. He does that so the dogs won't dig the mess later.

We are living in a suburban sub-division, and as long as I raise the meat birds in fairly small batches we don't have any problems with raising and processing meat birds here at the house.

 

[wolftracks]

Quote:
We did that.

I can remember fried chicken every sunday and if we were at my ggrandma's she would cut it in half for me and my cousn. LOL

 

[justbugged]

Quote:
We did that.

I can remember fried chicken every sunday and if we were at my ggrandma's she would cut it in half for me and my cousn. LOL

I remember liking the heart, but the liver was nasty, and I still don't care for the gizzard. We let my mom eat the liver. She likes that kind of stuff.

 

[wolftracks]

Quote:
We did that.

I can remember fried chicken every sunday and if we were at my ggrandma's she would cut it in half for me and my cousn. LOL

I remember liking the heart, but the liver was nasty, and I still don't care for the gizzard. We let my mom eat the liver. She likes that kind of stuff.

I used to hate them until I decided I loved pate. LOL

 

[ixnay]

Just finished making up a bunch of stock from the bones of two roast birds, necks, gizzards, hearts, and FEET! Saw somewhere (here? don't know) about a person who found out that chefs would PAY MONEY for chicken feet, skin removed, for the sake of making stock. Removing the skin takes a little effort, but the collagen gives the richest possible mouth-feel and flavor to the stock. Yeah, they're a little creepy looking, but apparently only to us westerners. I say that because when I was going to school near Boston's Chinatown, I would go to a dim sum restaurant occasionally, and the waiters there would warn me away from the chicken feet thingies. Then again, there are those among us who eat pig trotters.

Long story short: if you make chicken stock, for pete's sake, use all the bits except the liver (which should not go in stock)(I'm not able to deal with heads, either). As far as the livers are concerned, if you don't like 'em, ask your parents if they like braunschweiger or liverwurst. We made pate last year, and my MIL thought she had died and gone to heaven. Chicken liver pate is wonderful stuff, and you can safely eat the livers of birds you raise yourself. Commercially raised chicken liver, not so much.

I had a professor at veterinary school who swore by feeding dogs an entire (feathers and all, if possible) raw chicken weekly. However, I don't think he thought about the issue of the dogs developing a taste for the live chickens on the property.

-- Nan

 

[darkmatter]

Gizzards: My Mother told me, when she was a kid, her and her sibling would fight over who got the gizzard. When they were older they found out neither one really liked the gizzards, they just didn't want the other to have it!