GIZZARDS, LIVERS, HEARTS, BACKS, AND FEET -------- Eat the Whole Chicken

      Sometimes when life plays tricks on you,it is time to laugh a little. 

Yesterday, amid chaos and cold and snow-- I reached into my freezer and got out one of my favorite things. CHICKEN GIZZARDS.  Seems like lots of closed-minded people choke a little when you mention this.  But it was intended that we eat the entire chicken.  We all know how wonderful a really good fried chicken leg, a baked chicken breast, a great chicken salad or a delightful stir-fry can be.  We all know how to use the breast, the legs,  and the wings.  We all order them in a restaurant or make them at home.  But, lets look at the rest of the chicken. 



gizzards, yummmm



The gizzard is a muscular structure and is found lurking in the paper bag that is tucked into a baking chicken, a turkey or duck.  The foul picks up little stones, swallows them and stores them in the gizzard.  As other food is eaten, this structure serves as a live food processor and grinds corn etc into digestible bits.  The cooking of the gizzard is much like any other muscle, but takes a little longer as its consistency is so fibrous.

My favorite way to cook gizzards is to flour, season with salt and pepper and fry them so they are crispy, with lots of good stuff in the pan.  Then put them into a oven dish with the crunchy pan stuff, no grease, and add some cream or milk mixed with a couple tablespoons of flour and cover the gizzards with this solution.  With oven on 350 let bake until fork tender.  Yummmmmm. Served with green veggies, some of the guilt is taken away.

Choose me!

I remember as a child big dinners with twenty or thirty people.  Big platters of fried chicken were put out on the huge table on the enclosed back porch.  As children we did not get to eat until the adults had left the table, well until the men had left to go outside and talk and smoke.  We never got gizzards,livers, breasts, or thighs.  We ate of the drumsticks, wings, necks and feet..  I suppose that is why I love the leg so much to this day.  At home with just the three of us, Grandaddy would share his gizzard with me.  Grandmother would not dare cook a chicken with out the gizzards being prepared

Necks are such a wonderful treat but you must work very hard  to enjoy.  You must pick the meat carefully from each joint. The flavor is terrific in chicken soup.  The turkey neck has much more flavor, because there is much more meat.  Traditionally the turkey neck is cooked with the gizzard liver for giblet gravy.

One of my Great finds.....

Chicken feet have a place, as do gizzards, necks, hearts, backs and livers, have a real place in almost every culture. We all enjoy, or reject, much of the food that is specific to a given culture.

The livers we are all familiar with. The food value is terrific...but only if the chicken is one that has not ingested large amounts of pesticides, hormones and other toxic substances.


We savor chopped chicken livers as a wonderful holiday treat and especially if it comes from a New York deli.
Asia and the Carribean have numerous recipes using chicken parts.  When we vacation there we are so surprised with the tastes.  Some spicy and some earthy. We could be adventurous

Enjoy this Old Elizabethan Recipe
To make a Chicken-Pie
Make your Paste with cold Cream, Flour, Butter and the yolk of an Egg, roul it very thin, and lay it in your Baking-pan, then lay Butter in the Bottom
Then lay in your Chickens cut in quarters with some whole Mace, and Nutmeg sliced, with some Marrow, hard Lettuce, Eryngo Root, and Citron Pill, with a few Dates stoned and sliced: Then lay good store of Butter, Close up your Pie and Bake it: Then Cut it open, and put in some Wine, Butter, and Sugar with the Yolks of two or three Eggs well beaten together over the fire, till it be thick, so serve it to the Table, and garnish your Dish with some pretty Conceits made in Paste