Chicken Feet and other Stories

Turkey bones are picked clean, leafy tops of celery have waited in the hydrator since I chopped the crisp stalks into bite sized bits for my cornbread dressing (a tradition I cling to because 1) It’s not Thanksgiving without cornbread dressing; 2) it’s one of the ways I celebrate Dell Marie, my grandmother’s maid who cooked our family’s cornbread dressing from the time my mother was a child until Dell Marie’s retirement when I was in grade school; 3) No offense here (maybe I just haven’t sat down at table with the right stuffing), but stuffing usually tastes like canned dog food smells.)

So. Armed with turkey bones and leafy celery tops, I have at my disposal some of the fundamentals of good turkey broth. What more than turkey bones, celery and water does a good stock need? Onions. Check. Carrots – a precious commodity in my house. I’m down to only one bag full of carrots from my own garden and to cook all the flavor out of a perfectly good carrot when I have so many other uses for them, is a sacrifice I’m not willing to make, even if carrots are the secret to perfection when it comes to chicken stock (which is debatable in my world but is vigorously maintained by several cookbook authors, including Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall.) So. Skip the carrots, but that’s okay because I have a secret ingredient up my sleeve. Chicken Feet.

(Hindsight reveals that I should have actually put them up my sleeves and done my own version of a Saturday Night Live Lawrence Welk skit a la Kristen Wiig, but that would have involved holding them, perhaps letting my sleeves brush them and freaking my children out to an unforgivable degree and I couldn’t get myself there.)

Like a witches brew, minus the eye of newt and toe of frog, my broth pot has an unsettling effect on my family.

What, for example, is the black patch on the pad of the chicken foot? I have no idea. But I cooked it anyway, because my farmer assured me these were clean chicken feet. (My farmer looks like Qui Gon Jinn, so the question arises: is he using the Jedi mind trick on me?) And is it really right to cook the talons? I think not, but I didn’t know it at the time. Subsequent research has revealed that some folks cut the chicken’s toenails prior to eating the feet. But if I’m not eating the feet, just boiling them for many hours, maybe it’s okay to keep the claws untrimmed? Well, all I can say is we’ve now eaten turkey pot pie made from leftover turkey meat and my turkey/chicken feet stock and we have experienced no ill-effects from supping on talon broth. And finally, what about that membrane that is peeling off the shank? I think I was supposed to remove that, too. Didn't, but lived to tell about it.

What inspired this leap into what I will call backwoods culinary sense? Well. Thrice in one week I encountered the idea of chicken feet. First in a column by longtime Texas writer and reporter, Leon Hale, who mentions the use of chicken feet in his mother’s chicken-and-dumplings preparations during the Great Depression. Second in a cookbook I’d brought home from the library and have since returned and because it is not within reach I cannot confirm which cookbook it was, but I bet that it was Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Meat book (and even if it wasn’t, I put that book on my recommended list for his thoughtful approach to meat eating, meat preparation and animal husbandry). Third, while picking up my delivery of local meat, cheese and dairy, I opened a cooler of frozen grass-fed beef and pasture raised poultry and pork and beheld (and here is where, in the movie version of this story, a dramatic choir of voices should sing out and a hallowed aura should appear indicating a mystical confluence of universal forces) a bag of chicken feet. I interpreted the choir of voices and shining aura as a sure sign that the universe wanted me and my family to embrace the nose to toes to tail philosophy of meat eating. So I ordered my own bag of frozen chicken feet for the next week’s pick-up.

As if I needed further proof that this was my rightful path, my months-long wait for Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon ended. During the intervening week, the library notified me that the book was on hold for me. So when I picked up my chicken feet, I was armed with not just a mystical faith that this was right, but with nutritional information about the trace minerals and boost to bone, joint and digestive health provided by a stock made from chicken feet.

And thus ends my story of chicken feet, except to add that

• I added only 3 or 4 feet to my stock pot with my turkey bones, onions, celery and water to cover and simmered it for a couple of hours
• yes, my broth was gelatinous when cooled in a way that my broth hasn’t been in years 
• no, I haven’t found it to be a fountain of youth, revitalizing my skin, hair and fingernails. But that’s not to say I won’t keep hoping. 

P.S. This post is part of the Fight Back Friday carnival of renegade food links. Read more good ideas for cooking Real food at Food Renegade Fight Back Friday.