Chicken paws are the feet of chickens, as labeled in the stores hereabouts (S. GA). Are they sold in stores near you? If so, what are they good for? I imagine a bunch of them in a pressure cooker with some water could make some good broth, but the ones I saw today were $1.99 a pound, while leg quarters were 59 cents per pound in ten pound bags. $1.99 a pound seems a bit high for bones, scaly skin, tendons, and toenails.
They are probably being sold for broth in your location, but a popular dim sum dish is essentially barbecued chicken feet. The chewiness is part of the charm, I’ve been led to understand. Don’t know why they would be higher than the leg quarters though.
I’ve never seen them sold as “chicken paws,” but I have seen chicken feet as well as boneless chicken feet at certain ethnic stores. In our family, we would use them for broth. They add richness and body. The boneless chicken feet I saw I think are used in some types of Asian dishes. Looking online, that does seem to be the case, it being used in some Chinese cuisines.
They’re available in Asian grocery stores, here. I’ve never seen them called anything but chicken feet. Usually they cost less than other parts of the chicken, but not less than whole chicken. If they’re costing more where you live, I’d guess that they come from a specialty supplier, and that there isn’t much of a market for them. Or, like chicken wings, they’re sought after and the store can run the price up. I remember when wings were a third of the cost of drumsticks, or less. Damn you, Buffalo Wings.
I’ve tried the dim sum chicken feet. They had an amazing number of bones in them. Tasted pretty good, but a lot of work.
The Koreans prepare them with copious amounts of red pepper paste. Pregnant Korean women sometimes crave them, but then there is an old wives tale about eating ugly food during a pregnancy will result in an ugly baby.
If you wanted to make a stock with a lot of dissolved collagen, would using chicken feet do the trick? They seem to have plenty of sinew. I know one uses veal or pork feet when making aspics and meat jellies, for just that reason.
Would it be stating the obvious to say that chickens don’t have paws?
My dogs like them. 
As others have sad, chicken feet common as dim sum at the places where Chinese immigrants go.
Chicken quarters are almost always the cheapest meat around while people pay a premium for ethnic specialties – even if the ethnic specialty was originally poverty food. For example you wouldn’t believe the cost of Oxtail anymore, carribean folk originally made it because it was cheap, now they pay extra because its traditional. Nowadays, oxtail costs more than ground beef, and more than london broil, and more than lots of types of steak. If you can even find it for $5 or $6/lb you’re doing well. (2006 article noting that at that time, wholesale price was already $3/lb) That’s how it goes with nostalgia foods.
Yuck!
Why “yuck!”?
What’s any “yuckier” about chicken feet than chicken drumsticks or thighs or other chicken parts?
Serious question.
Just to correct this, they are deep fried, then braised (and kept warm in a steamer).
When I was a kid, back in the 50s, a farmer used to come around once a week with a truck full of live chickens. My mother would go out and pick one (I have no idea how), and the farmer would kill it and pluck the feathers. He gave us everything but the head. The neck, giblets and feet were used to make chicken soup. I liked to eat the feet, though they were mostly bones.