This is Recipe Roundup, episode 78. This past weekend I got to have an eating experience that was entirely new to me. Originally, my friends and I were searching for a place with a reputable Peking Duck that was open for dine-in. Giving up, one of my friends suggested Chinese Hot Pot! I am a huge face of soups and Asian cuisine – and I especially like meals that take a little bit of special preparation. Hot Pot is all of these things at once. While they do have set orders, we opted for the All You Can Eat option with two broths. Once the broths were boiling on our table, we received dish upon dish of thinly sliced meat, mushrooms, vegetables, tofu, and noodles, that we then cooked in the broth. As you cook more things, the broth becomes increasingly rich and delicious and you can then soak up all of the flavor with noodles. If you ever have the opportunity to have Hot Pot, absolutely go for it. We spent about 2 hours cooking and eating and eventually reached the altered state of broth drunk and meat sweats that you can only get from the best food. 

 

This week’s recipe is not for Hot Pot, but we will be talking about my favorite homemade chicken broth. It’s not quite the 20 hour broth that the Hot Pot place boasts, but it is rich in nutrients and collagen. As you may know, Bone Broth is having quite the trendy resurgence in health conscious circles. All sorts of fancy broth can be purchased, but as usual, I will insist that you can make an entirely better version at home! 

 

A sign of a good collagen rich broth is how gelatinized it is when refrigerated. This recipe is basically chicken jello when cold and the trick is chicken feet!

 

Chicken feet are one of those ingredients that you can find in cuisine all over the world, but also make those unfamiliar shudder with trepidation. Broth is a great medium to work on getting over that! When we make any type of bone broth, we are boiling the ingredients in salted water to leach the minerals and other nutrients from the bones. Chicken feet are mostly skin and connective tissue – little collagen bombs. The bones in chicken feet are relatively thin and absolutely filled with marrow – my fiance always munches on the bones after they’ve been boiled for hours and I’ve gotten as much broth power out of them as I want. 

 

You can find chicken feet at international grocery stores, some local farms, and butchers. You are looking for already peeled chicken feet – they should be a pale pinkish white and soft with all of the scaly outer skin removed. 

 

I like to call this Dragon Claw Broth because peeled chicken feet look like what I imagine dragons would walk on. 

 

You’ll need

 

Half a dozen chicken feet

The bones from one chicken

1 onion cut in half

2 carrots

Several stalks of celery

6 garlic cloves, smashed

1 tablespoons of black pepper corns

Salt to taste

A few small knobs of ginger, smashed

2 tsp turmeric

Any other spices you might desire

 

Place All ingredient in a large pot full of fresh water and bring to a boil. Start with a good palm of salt and reevaluate later. 

Continue to boil for at least 6 hours, making sure to replenish the water as it evaporates. 

After 6 hours, taste the broth and season as needed. Continue cooking as long as you enjoy the flavor of the broth and have the time for. 

Once you have reached your preferred flavor, carefully strain the broth and save in a mason jar – be careful not to crack the jars with the hot liquid. 

 

Use immediately or store for up to a week in the fridge for later!

All of my recipes are online at alleghenymountainradio.org. You can share your own recipes with the show by sending them to sage@amrmail.org. For recipe Roundup this is Sage Tanguay.