Don’t knock it 'till you’ve tried it. We weren’t a farm family, but our neighbors butchered hogs and often a steer or two every fall. My brother and I used to help out. It’s been many years since I’ve done it, but I’ll bet I can still kill, scald, scrape, and dress one off properly. Hey, those roasts, steaks, and chops you enjoy had to come from somewhere.
You city kids could learn a thing or two.
They always say they use everything but the oink and the curl in thr tail
Iampunha, I think you were thinking of cracklins – which is sort of grease mixed with meat juices, I think – for your definition of chittlins. This indeed is intestines, and testicles, too. All stewed down in this awful-smelling glop. I was introduced to it at a party/cookout at the home of a black family. Mostly the older folks ate the chittlins; our friends our age were gagging as much as I was. My husband ate some, just to be able to say he did.
I wonder what’s so great about intestines. I was just re-reading Lonesome Dove and in the section where the Indian steals Lorie, the outlaw Indians squeeze out the contents of a buffalo or deer’s intestines, and devour them with great relish.
Blackeye peas are wonderful, marvelous beans. I eat them over rice in a dish called Hoppin John. They’re good as a side dish with an omlette, too.
Ellen, could you post that recipe for Hoppin John somewhere?
Tongue is yummy! I don’t see how people can eat pastrami or roast beef with all that fat-but I love a good boiled tongue sandwich.
Pickled pigs feet actually aren’t all that rare, every time I go to a tostada place in mexico they have the far of pigs feet right next to the jar of jalapenos with carrots in vinegar. I’d always kind of shuddered and backed away from it all but last summer my cousin did something I’ll never forgive him for. He bought me the pig’s foot and would leave until I tasted it. It wasn’t too horribly awful but I doubt I’ll be eating that stuff again anytime soon.
Am I the only one here who has eaten pickled pigs feet? I learned from my grandfather who used to eat them… love the slimy pickling sauce surrounding them…You have to eat them raw to get the full effect…They are quite good…
And speaking of chitlins, you ain’t never smelled anything quite as bad as a batch of chitlins cookin’ in the pot…I’ve been in many a home in D.C. where the people have been cooking the chitlins to boil away what was inside the intestine…Wheeewwwww smells like shit…
Ever smell lutefisk cooking? Burns away the little hairs in your nose.
I will likely be going to purchase some pig’s feet this week.
I don’t intend to eat them. I start my first surgery rotation (ENT) tomorrow, and med students traditionally use pig’s feet to practice their sutures.
Dr. J
Pickled pigs’ feet are a delicacy among the Polish-American population on the Thumb of Michigan. They have an interesting gelatinous texture, if you like that sort of thing, and there’s not much meat on them, but to quote Spencer Tracy, “What there is, is choice.”
Cracklings is what you get when you render lard at slaughtering time. It’s the little bits of meat that were still connected to the pig fat you scraped off and dropped in the kettle to be rendered.
AFAIK, chitlins is not testicles, just the upper intestines. You squeeze out the “stuff”, which isn’t really shit yet, just partially digested pig feed, and soak the intestines in multiple changes of cold water with a little vinegar added, which can take most of a day. Then you cut the actually surprisingly clean intestines up into 1 or 2 inch segments and deep-fry them. Ellen, if what you had was an “awful-smelling glop”, then somebody somewhere wasn’t doing it right. The classic American pioneer recipe for cleaning pig intestines calls for cold water soaks, NOT boiling. No wonder it smelled awful. And also, AFAIK, even the pioneers didn’t use the lower 1/3 of it, i.e. the rectum.
I believe that the thing with buffalo intestines is that it’s from the upper portion of the intestine, that has undigested or only partially grass, etc. in it. So it’s not like they’re just wolfing down buffalo droppings.
I forgot to say that when cleaning pig intestines for chitlins, they also have to be turned inside-out and very carefully and thoroughly scraped, before beginning the series of cold water soaks. It isn’t enough to just slosh them around in some water.
DDGoose, for the record I didn’t eat any! Just was present for the consumption. I don’t know if they cooked it right or not, but being vegetarian~ish, even if it WAS prepared right, I’d think it smelled like glop!
I’ll start a thread for vegetarian recipes and post my Hoppin John recipe there. In the meantime, cook rice, heat can of blackeye peas, dump 'em on top, enjoy. 
i saw cybil sheppard eat from a jar of pigs feet on, i believe rosie o’donnell’s show. it looked like she crammed in an entire hoof.
the pickled pigs feet (jello with a bit of meat) must be a slavic thing. mum actually made this when i was a kid. never, ever ate it, thank god for the drawer in the table. i believe she called it (i can spell better in cyrillic) holodetz. disgusting is what i called it. i believe this will disappear from church dinners when mum’s generation passes, no one under 60ish will even touch the stuff, let alone figure out how to make it.
I ate them in Mexico, in sort of a soupy concoction. They weren’t too bad—I’ve eaten worse things.
But they were freshly cut off the poor pig, not jarred or pickled.
My grandmother used to eat them, according to my mother.
When I worked at a grocery store, the meat department sold livers and kidneys. Even raw, they smelled rank.
Isn’t organ meat supposed to be very unhealthy?
I actually nibbled on a pickled pigs foot once; it was–different. Not too far in concept from other marinated meats. It tasted like…pickled pork.
(Once was enough.)
My fortunately departed Ex loved beef heart–boiled. (This is the same man who like lutefisk: warm fish jello, smells like a shrimp boat on a hot day.) It was low fat, but I couldn’t get it down–maybe because he’d intone “thump-thump” just as the fork got near my lips.
Disassociating madly, Brits eat something called “trotters”; what are those? I always assumed they were pigs feet. Hey, could they be worse than pickled eels?
Think I’ll go have a nice salad.
Veb
I love eating pigs’ feet, altho I’ve never had 'em pickled.
My mom and I both like pickled pig’s feet. Yes, we are of Polish extraction.
I also like blood sausage. Haven’t had any in a while, haven’t seen it in any supermarkets since I moved to Vegas. Of course, South Bend IN has a large Eastern European (mostly Polish and Hungarian) population, and Vegas doesn’t seem to have any largely Slavic neighborhoods.
Can’t cope with head cheese though. I tried it once. It was gross.
so many jokes… 
Carnivorousplant – You asked for my Hoppin John recipe, here it is: Hoppin’ John and other yummies It seems no one’s interested in adding to the thread, which I’d hoped would be a recipe exchange! <grumble grumple growl> I only attracted a meateater and an apprehensive John.