Preparing Chicken Feet for Stock

Sometimes people get a funny expression when they look in our freezer.

Apparently a bag of chicken feet isn’t a common staple in most kitchens.

But I think that part of ethical meat-eating is to use the whole animal. So if I kill one of our animals to sustain the family, I’m not going to waste a scrap of that sacrifice.

Hence, chicken feet.

Apparently there are some pretty interesting recipes out there for chicken feet. (Fry ’em! Barbecue ’em! Braise ’em!)

However, our family uses them in stock (it’s a better way to serve them to unsuspecting guests and skeptical family members). Plus, they make a delicious, super-gelatinous stock.

Here’s how we prepare them:

Find your chicken feet. I have no idea where you’d buy chicken feet. I’d guess a natural foods store or a local farmer. If you butcher your own chickens, here’s our routine: On butchering day, we take a big ziplock bag out to the processing table and toss in the feet as we go. We might give them a quick rinse-off, but otherwise don’t process them at all. Then we freeze them all until we have the time to deal with them.

When I was little and first heard about eating chicken feet, I was totally grossed out. I pictured my own chickens’ little poop-y tootsies and thought, “Someone would eat that?!?” Now that I understand how they are prepared, though, I understand that they aren’t as unsanitary as they sound. That said, I wouldn’t use just any chicken feet. When we butcher old egg hens, I feel like their feet are just a little too gnarled, so we toss those. And I would definitely be sure that the chickens were pasture-raised.

The feet will probably be frozen, so thaw them before you go to the next step.

Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. The bigger the pot, the more feet you can put in at once.

Then put in a couple chicken feet (not enough to cool the water down significantly). Let them sit for two minutes. Ideally, the water should be boiling again at the end.

Pull the feet out and dunk them into ice water. You can throw some more feet into the pot of boiling water now, if you want to process more.

After the feet have slightly cooled, start peeling off the outer, yellow, scaly layer.

I’ve heard this described as “slipping off the outer layer” or “pulling it off like a sock”. Don’t believe it! This is pretty hard, but doable if it was boiled well enough.

To work the skin off between the toes, it’s helpful to pull the toes back, stretching the “palm” of the foot tight.

Pull the toe-nail caps off, or clip them off.

Add them to the rest of your stock mixture! As you can see, the peeling job isn’t perfect. That’s fine. Nothing’s perfect.

So to recap: Thaw your well-raised chicken feet. Boil for two minutes. Dunk into ice water. Peel off the outer layer. Don’t demand perfection.

See? That wasn’t too hard. You can do this.

Hurrah for whole-animal eating!