What Do You Do With These Weird Animal Parts?

Cafe Society
1

Perusing the local grocery store, I have run into some very odd bits of various animals. I’m listing the items with my guesses on what do with them. These include:

Beef liver (okay, not so weird)
Beef tongue (ditto, but what to do with it? Ground beef? Sandwiches?)
Beef neckbones (getting weirder, but soup stock, perhaps?)
Pig feet (even weirder, but still perhaps some sort of stock)
And the pinnacle of weirdness: Chicken feet. I have no clue what you would do with chicken feet.

So, can anyone tell me who actually uses these things and is it a proximity to Mexico thing or a proximity to Texas thing?

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Beef liver (okay, not so weird)

I don’t care for any liver but chicken liver, but if I did like beef liver, I’d pan fry it with some onions.

Beef tongue (ditto, but what to do with it? Ground beef? Sandwiches?)

Boil it & slice it for sandwiches. Actually quite good.

Beef neckbones (getting weirder, but soup stock, perhaps?)

Definitely stock/broth. Neckbones make a nice hearty, silky stock. Not sure why they perform differently than marrow bones, but they do. My favorite neckbones to use for soups/stock are lamb neck bones. Fantastic.
Simmer them gently for several hours with some aromatics, then strip off the meat, return it to the strained broth & make soup.

Pig feet (even weirder, but still perhaps some sort of stock)

I really don’t know what these are for.

And the pinnacle of weirdness: Chicken feet. I have no clue what you would do with chicken feet.

Deep fry them, sauce them & nibble. Can also dust with flour or cornstarch before frying. Pretty good, actually.

So, can anyone tell me who actually uses these things and is it a proximity to Mexico thing or a proximity to Texas thing?

I use some of them, but not all of them, and I’m pretty far from Texas & the Mexican border.

3

You can boil or fry chicken feet, and then nibble on them. I know they’re eaten by Chinese and Surinam people here in holland.

Pig feet can be cooked or grilled. I think it’s a southern US thing.

4

Chicken feet are good in dim sum but by far the best thing about them is for making soup. Toss some into your broth and you will have a super rich yummy soup.

5

Southerners often put boil pork neckbones along with dry peas for flavoring. I guess you could do the same thing with beef neckbones. They also pickle the pig feet then eat the meat. Just take them out of the jar and peel off the “good” parts.

6

Beef tongue is Jewish delicatessen sandwich meat. Growing up, I always put it on the list with salami, balogna, roast beef, etc. as a standard type of sandwich. My father was particularly fond of tongue sandwiches.

You can see it on the Carnegie Deli menu (“Tongue’s for the Memory”) listed with the corned beef and pastrami.

7

I used to go to a chinese restaurant that had a sign that said “Pig’s Head’s, $X.00” (don’t remember the exact price)

One day we went in and there one was, just sitting on the counter.

Anybody know what you do with a pig’s head?

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I know what I do with it—turn and walk the other way. As for what others do…well, I’ll have to see who chimes in.

9

My grandmother used to make something called “hogs head cheese” - I never got near it, let alone tasted it. Grandpa would brag when he butchered a pig that he “used everthing but the squeal.” My mother was fond of pickled pigs feet, another item I’ve never tasted. I know where that pig’s been walking, thank you very much.

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  • “Our tongue sandwiches speak for themselves.”*
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I have long been of the opinion that the South is to the pig as the Native American was to the buffalo: Everything gets used.

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I’ve seen tiny cans of “Pig brains cooked in milk gravy”.

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My brother bought pigs’ feet when he was learning how to suture. They make a passable standin for human skin.
-Lil

14

Upon moving to New England, I saw “pickled lamb’s tongues” in a glass jar in most supermarkets. You could almost hear them bleating.

15

Put it on a stick as an offering to the Beast?

I’m almost tempted to make some chicken soup with chicken feet. It’s like a bay leaf, right? Add the feet for flavor and remove before serving? Now that’s a secret ingredient.

16

Let me share a traditional Dutch recipe.

“Balkenbrij” - boil a pigs head with half a pound of bacon in salted water. Take the meat of the bone and grind it up with the bacon. Add pepper and cloves. Put everying back in the water, add more water (total of up to 5 - 6 liters), add flour (about 1.5 pounds) and stir until its thick and porridgy. Add salt. Pour into bows and cool. Cut into slices and bake in lard.

Sound pretty tasty, actually.

Translated from my lovely 1950’s Margriet “magazine for mother and child” cookbook.

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You know, I think I’ll stick with bacon and pork chops. Other people can deal with the neck, feet, head, and any other strange part of the animal.

18

Grasp it by the ears and eat its face off.

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I’ve had an amazingly good liver goulash at a little Hungarian cafe (unfortunately long gone). All I could tell was liver, onions, and handfuls of paprika. I look for a recipe once in a while but haven’t found any that sound right.

I would guess that the beef neckbones make a different stock because of the spinal cord. I’d be doubtful about using them, since Mad Cow Disease comes from the central nervous system. (And yes, it sounds gross anyway.)

20

I sometimes shop at a Super Savers in a largely Mexican neighborhood. The sell all the parts listed so far along with:

Pork skin
Pork Ears
Sheep ears
Sheep heads

I know that some people fry their own pork skins (chicharinos? chicharonis?)
I ate head cheese as a child, it was mostly gelatin with pork “parts” supended in it. Thinking abut a pig’s snout while eating it was enough to put me off it.