Kristine Rudolph

If you are a fan of my Facebook page – and I hope that you are – you saw this post:

I can report that chicken feet make excellent bone broth. However, looking in the cooker and finding a bunch of claws staring back at you does take some getting used to.

Now, you should know I never make my bone broth the same way twice.  It’s usually some combo like this:

• marrow bones (I’ve used lamb, grass-fed beef, turkey carcasses and chicken carcasses before.)
• carrots
• celery
• onions / shallots / leeks or some combination thereof
• garlic

I throw all of that in a roasting pan, and let it go at 375 degrees for nearly an hour.  I like for everything to get nice and golden-brown.  Then I put it all in my slow cooker, cover with water, add a bay leaf or two along with a splash of apple cider vinegar, and let it burble away on low.  If it seems a little anemic, I will uncover it for awhile.  I cook it anywhere from 12 hours minimum to thirty-six maximum.

This weekend, I was in the South Carolina Low Country where we decided to go crabbing.  Having been instructed to use chicken necks as bait, I headed to the market where I was able to find turkey necks and chicken feet, but no chicken necks.  Being the novice crabber that I am, I bought both and hoped one would work.

With a 5 year old, a 4 year old, a 4 month old and my dad in a wheelchair all in tow, our crabbing expedition lasted about fourteen minutes.  The tide was too high, the air was getting chilly, and the dock was definitely not child-safe.  So we trekked back home where we had an entire pound of chicken feet left unused.

So I threw four turkey necks, a pound of chicken “paws” and the aromatics in the oven then the slow cooker.  I figured that the resulting broth would be very nourishing, given all of the great collagen in chicken claws.

I didn’t count on being a little freaked out at the sight of all those fingernails poking out at me from the slow cooker.  I couldn’t even bring myself to snap a picture.

The result?  Amazingly rich, deliciously gelatinous poultry bone broth.  I gobbled it up.  (Apologies for the turkey joke.)

Although I couldn’t bring myself to take a picture of the claws, I did take a little movie so you could see how gelatinous it was.  Ignore the screaming children in the background:

Chicken Foot Broth

What parts of an animal have you used in your cooking that you never imagined you would?

(For instructions on preparing stock from chicken feet you get straight from a farmer or otherwise unprocessed, check out this post from Nourished Kitchen.)