Savory Sauce Using Chicken Feet

Slow-Cooked Chicken Feet: good for bone and joint health!

With more Americans recognizing the health benefits of traditional foods, I now have a non-Asian group of people with whom I dare to share such recipes as this. Such groups of people are followers of Nourishing Traditions (by Sally Fallon) and the Weston A. Price Foundation, and would refer to themselves as "real foodies" (in contrast to consumers of fake foods).

Some people still get turned off by the idea of eating chicken feet, or drinking the bone broth/stock that results from slow cooking them.

I offer here a method by which people can get the readily-absorbable vitamins and  minerals (definitely better than taking supplements because our body recognizes food and knows exactly what to do with the nutrients that come in the right form and proportion so they get assimilated easily).

Slow cooking is a must to dissolve the gelatinous collagen, and vinegar is necessary to leach out the minerals.

These chicken feet came from homegrown chickens. My mother-in-law raises them for us. We have a total of about 80 chickens, and I get all the feet because nobody else wants them.

Here is how I clean the chicken feet (I figure I could also probably ask the slaughterer to chop off the nails).



Ingredients:

For a gallon-bag full of chicken feet, I use the following proportions of ingredients:

1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup cider vinegar (you can use red wine vinegar)
1 tbsp oyster sauce (optional)
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp sea salt (can be adjusted later)
1/4 tsp freshly milled black pepper
5 cloves garlic, minced
3 bay leaves
1 star anise

Instructions:

Place the clean chicken feet in a slow cooker. Mix the rest of the ingredients then pour onto the chicken feet. Cover and cook on low for 7 hours, then stir to redistribute the feet and push them toward the sauce. Cook for two more hours, occasionally stirring.

You can then strain the sauce and cool to remove excess fat, of you might want to keep the fat in the sauce (for better absorption of vitamin D). You may freeze in small containers or pressure can at 11 psi weighted-gauge or 10 psi dial-gauge for 20 mins if using jelly jars.  You can use these as sauce for stir-fries, or to flavor steamed rice.