It sounds Offal-ly good to me!

[Farmfresh]

Here is an unusual cooking question for you all ... what is your favorite way to eat offal?

You know all of those parts and bits that you get when butchering an animal!

I bring this up because I am about to make my annual delivery of chicken feet to my friend who is originally from Liberia. She uses my chicken feet to make a traditional soup.

Years ago when she found out I butcher my own chickens she shyly asked what I did with the feet. I told her I threw them away, thinking what an odd question. Then she told me about her soup and she has been getting my chicken feet every year since!

I guess I should not have been so surprised. I grew up with a German grandfather and ate LOTS of strange things the other kids did not. We often ate liver and onions, which is more excepted by the masses, but scrambled eggs and pigs brains was a breakfast at grandma's house too. I used to beg, as a little child in the store, for pickled pigs feet and other parts like tongue and kidneys were served as well. My very favorite thing was "headmeat", which I have since discovered is more properly called scrapple. Grandma Nettie would slice the cold meat thin, dip it in egg and flour batter and fry it up in some good bacon grease until the crust was brown and the center was hot. It was served up with eggs for breakfast.

My hubby grew up with the usual liver and onions, fried chicken livers, hearts and gizzards and also had his aunts "suet pudding" for holidays. Suet pudding (I have no idea how it is made but weird stuff is in there) is a "treat" I do not appreciate.

An old friend of mine used to make us beef heart sandwiches. I don't know that recipe either. His grandma made a great kidney pie. Scotland has made a grand tradition of their haggis.

So how do you like your offal?

 

[PamsPride]

Uhhh....I don't eat any of that stuff!

 

[Farmfresh]

I know I am ab normal. But surely there are other weirdo like me out there somewhere!

Hubby and I both got those shocked looks last year at the Countrysiders reunion. They spit roasted a young pig for all of the people to feast on and after first helpings (ok and second helpings as well) of the meat, we each grabbed a toasted piggy foot and started nibbling. I thought Countryside Magazine readers would have been less shocked.

 

[me&thegals]

I'm a wasteful wuss and don't eat any of it. However, my worker-share CSA woman got all our chicken feet, heart and crops when we butchered our 100 this summer.

 

[deb4o]

Oh love liver and onions, my mom hated cooking it for us kids, now thats kind of weird,us kids loved it and most moms would love for thier kids to eat it lol any way,I eat all the usual stuff, chicken livers, gizzards, had a german grandma so we to had eggs and brains and baked beef heart, my mom would make stuffing and slice the heart and put it into the stuffing and bake,mmmmm good. Had beef tongue for the first time this year when we butchered, not to bad. The peeling of it was the worst part but the meat was good.Love pig tails and cabbage or ox tails.There really is not much I won't eat lol

 

[Farmfresh]

CROPS? ! Now that is a new one on me. What did she do with them?

 

[Farmfresh]

I love ox tail soup!!

Oh and how about pork neck bones! We pile those into the crockpot with some good homemade BBQ sauce and later get all gooey cleaning those bones.

My sister who ate McDonalds hamburger ketchup only for the first 12 years of her life, has developed the habit of calling before she comes over. Not to be polite, but because she has come it several times when hubby and I are having a neck bone dinner or eating chicken back and neck meat leftover from making a good chicken stock. She can't imagine eating any meat with a bone in it.

Yes I said she IS MY sister.

 

[me&thegals]

CROPS? ! Now that is a new one on me. What did she do with them?

Oops. I think I meant gizzards. She asked for the chicken stomachs, and as best as we could work it out, that meant gizzards. So, grass and other goo were rinsed out before we bagged them all.

 

[Farmfresh]

Hubby loves fried gizzards and chicken hearts as well.

I can stand the hearts, but the gizzards are chewy. Plus being the one that has split them, cleaned out the partially digested contents and peeled out the inner lining has not made them more inviting. When he is not looking I sometimes just pitch the gizzards or feed them to the dogs.

 

[freemotion]

Offal.....awful! But my folks eat a lot of that stuff, especially my father. Stuffed beef heart was on the table more than once when I was a kid. Chicken livers wrapped in bacon (what a waste of bacon! ), fried slabs of calves liver, tongue....pickled pig's feet, and lately, dad got mom to cook up the chicken feet for him. They went into the soup when he was a kid and with 5 brothers and 5 sisters, the kids even chewed on the feet. One lean year, mom cooked up the lungs for the dog. Those things actually ***breathed*** on the woodstove when they filled up with steam, lifted the lid off the big canning pot, and then deflated, just to do it all over again.....