My Adidas
Chicken feet are gnarly-lookin' things aren't they? What with the pink-toned lizard skin and the talon-equipped toes and non-opposable "thumb".
Ick.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the foot of a chicken is indeed quite creepy in appearance. And depending on how a particular chicken is raised, his or her feet will either spend a good amount of time standing in the chicken's own hot feces within a small confined cage (regular industrial, corn-fed, mass-marketed chicken), or hopefully running around out in the open on dirt, grass, and the hot feces of other farm animals (natural, cage-free, free-range, blah blah blah chicken).
Double ick.
Now, if you can get past the pink lizard look of chicken feet, and if you can get past the notion of where those feet could have possibly spent all their walking (or standing) hours, and if you are a bit of an adventurous cook, then you may find that chicken feet can actually be a wonderful ingredient to use in the kitchen.
Not only can chicken feet be used to make a wonderfully rich and gelatinous homemade chicken stock, but they can also be transformed into tasty bits of goodness on which to nibble.
Yes, nibble.
That's right. Chicken feet are delicious.
For instance, the menus of Chinese dim sum joints often offer fried/braised/steamed chicken feet under the moniker of "Phoenix Claws" (perhaps risen from the heap of unwanted chicken parts).
And in the Philippines, street food vendors can be found grilling marinated chicken feet that are playfully nicknamed "Adidas" (three toes = three stripes). Similarly, grilled chicken heads are referred to as "helmets," and pig ears are known as the ever-so-80's "Walkman". I'm not making this up.
Filipinos. Clever marketers of food we are.
Anyhoo, I'm sure there are many more cultures with a chicken foot fetish. But for most chicken foot recipes that I've found, you have to first boil the feet to tenderize and soften them up a bit. As such, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, er, uh, boil chicken feet for two separate recipes: Chicken Stock and Grilled Adidas.






