I wouldn’t actually call it edible, but I might eat it, depending on the circumstances.
Yea, when rendered till they are jelly like substance and dissolved as soup base. 
Seconded.
Um do you mean “collagen” not cholesterol? I boil it down with bones etc, for stock for soup too.
DH eats “chicken feet” at the Chinese buffet, which as I understand it is just BBQ cartilage, right?
The first time I ate “rib tips” I was like, WTH??? its just mostly cartilage! I cant eat that stuff.
I didn’t eat cartilage before I met my wife. She’s Chinese and she loves all kinds of rubbery foods. Now I sometimes eat cartilaginous stuff and sometimes I don’t, depending on my mood.
Not right off the bone. Gelatin is made from cartilage, though, isn’t it?
There are some times when I actually crave cartilage and connective tissue and other times when I do not. So I voted category three. It may have to do with my body signaling that it needs whatever is in those tissues. I do not know.
Yeah, I’m down with this here, which goes for my vote of “kind of.” If it’s still in gristle form I’m not a fan, but melted aspic is the best part of roast beef. I’ve also had delicious pho that the menu claims has “beef tendon meatballs” which I’m assuming are in fact made of ground tendons. They had a weird texture but they were much tastier than the brisket that was also floating in the broth.
I voted ‘kind of’. In a technical sense, it’s probably edible, as in if you ate it you wouldn’t get sick and you might get some nourishment, but I wouldn’t choose to eat it.
The cartilage, though, can be boiled down and used in soups and stews.
It’s edible, but it’s not food.
If I accidentally get a piece of it in my mouth, I always think “don’t worry, you can do it. Just chew it up and swallow - it’ll be over before you know it”. But after a few panicky seconds of trying again and again to bite down on something that feels like a piece of a bungie cord, I always end up spitting it into a napkin.
This is what put me off pork chops for the longest time. I don’t know if it was just that my mother was a lousy cook or what, but pork chops, more so than almost anything else, always had a big, thick line of rubbery cartilage on them that I hated. Chew-bounce-chew-bounce-chew-bounce…shudder
It’s one of the best parts of chicken. Also the part that melts down to make a good home-made broth.
“Sort of”. It’s technically edible (not poisonous), but if it’s presented in chunks big enough to recognize (i.e. not ground into smithereens in hamburger) I will gag on it. If it’s disguised / pureed enough, I imagine my digestive system could extract some protein and fat from it.
And I’m sure it adds quite a bit to broth as another poster noted.
I once got the wrong thing in my bowl of pho - my daughter decided to try something with both steak and “soft tendon”. The waiter or the kitchen messed up, and I got the mix of meat and offal. I tried one bite and had to spit it out. I know tendon isn’t the same as cartilage but the parallel is there.
I didn’t think so until I had a cartilage based dish as a “Hot pot”. It was delicious.
In Japanese yakitori, there is a specific “nankotsu” menu item typically available, which is nothing other than chicken cartilage.
They also have nankotsu karaage, breaded and fried pieces of chicken cartilage. The stuff is amazing and I really miss it.
I think so. In China I’ve eaten ‘meat-on-a-stick’ from roadside vendors a number of times and it’s slightly crunchy, very chewy, and cheap as anything. They quickly heat/cook it on a hotplate and cover in spicy stuff. Sorry, I can’t be more accurate than that as I was introduced to it by a Chinese friend many years ago and forgot what she said it was.
Chicken cartilage is never cooked enough for me to consider it edible. I suppose it might become edible if you stewed it a long time, but then you’ve ruined the meat (I think).
I have no problem with the bits of cartilage you find in ham hocks or pork butt (which is shoulder, of course). I’ll take that joint in the center of a ham and cook it for six hours with pinto beans in a crockpot. Then, the cartilage breaks down until it’s maybe a little slippery and gelatinous, but there’s no crunch left. It’s definitely something I eat in that circumstance.
I would have to pass on cartilage.