Chicken Feet and Chicken Breast: Which one would you prefer?
“Oh my god! How can you guys eat it?” my friend Amy said when she first saw a plate of brown chicken feet on the table in a Chinese restaurant.
She told me she has never seen chicken feet in American grocery store and could not imagine how people put them in their months.
“I will show you!” I said as I ate one chicken foot and smiled, “Delicious!”
Variety of Chicken feet
Chicken feet are used in several regional Chinese cuisines. They can be served as a beer snack, cold dish, soup or main dish.
In Guangdong and Hong Kong, they are typically deep fried and steamed first to make them puffy before being stewed and simmered in a sauce flavored with black fermented beans, bean paste, and sugar; or in abalone sauce.
In mainland China, popular snack bars specializing in marinated food such as Yabozi (duck’s necks) also sell Lu ji zhao(卤鸡爪, marinated chicken feet), which are simmered with soy sauce, Sichuanese peppercorn, clove, garlic, star anise, cinnamon and chili flakes.
Today, packaged chicken feet are sold in most grocery stores and supermarkets in China as a snack, often seasoned with rice vinegar and chili. Another popular recipe is Bai yun feng zhao (白云凤爪), which is marinated in a sauce of rice vinegar, rice wine flavored with sugar, salt, and minced ginger for an extended period of time and served as a cold dish. In southern China, they also cook chicken feet with raw peanuts to make a thin soup.
Huge demand for chicken feet in China
The huge demand in China raises the price of chicken feet, which are often used as fodder in other countries. As of June 2011, 1 kg of raw chicken feet costs around 12 to 16 yuan in China, compared to 11–12 yuan for 1 kg of frozen chicken breast.
In 2000, Hong Kong, once the largest place for shipping chicken feet from over 30 countries, traded a total of 420,000 tons of chicken feet at the value of US$230 million. Two years after China joined the WTO in 2001, China has approved the direct import of American chicken feet, and since then, China has been the major destination of chicken feet from around the globe.
Why Chinese people like eating chicken feet?
The first reason is saving money and not wasting food. If it is an animal, then we can eat every part of it, why throw them in the trash can? In ancient time, there are not so much food as we have today, our ancestors eat everything to keep alive. As a result, they created a lot of way to make delicious chicken feet.
Another reason is chicken feet are good for health. One of the positive health-related benefits of eating chicken feet is a good clear complexion. Research by the Department of Animal Science of National Chung-Hsing University in Taiwan showed that chicken feet contained a lot of collagen, as you know is the ingredient for youthful looking skin.
The last but not the least, chicken feet are really really delicious. Once you try it, you can’t stop.
My roommate Dominique is an America girl. She likes eating chicken breasts and she can cook more than five flavors. She said she learned it from her mum. As for me, I personally don’t like chicken breast and most of Chinese don’t like it, either. The texture of the meat is too coarse which make it taste so old, not soft. Most of the edible tissue on the feet consists of skin and tendons, with no muscle. This gives the feet a distinct texture different from the rest of the chicken’s meat.
Why American like chicken breast?
Chicken breasts are neutral, firm, and take seasonings/marinades/sauces well. In addition, there is not so much fat in chicken breast, which is good for health.
Chicken breasts are easier to bone and provide a single large piece of meat when boned which is helpful in various ways that involve stuffing, rolling, etc, such as Chicken Kiev or Chicken Cordon Bleu. And you can also pound chicken breasts into thin cutlets which allows you to mimic pounded veal cutlets for dishes such as chicken marsala.
The difference of food culture between America and Chinese
Now I am studying in the U.S., and I go to grocery store once a week. It’s truth that the America grocery store, like Saveway, it’s totally different from the food market in China.
1. Different places
In the U.S., if you want to buy food, go to a grocery store like Walmart. In China, most of people will go to Cai shi chang, a market that sell fresh vegetables and meat. Chinese people like fresh food, the fresher the food, the healthier they are.
The Cai shi chang is a place that gathered many owners. Each owner sells their won products, and you can also bargain the price with the owner.
2. Different selling
In Saveway, all meats here, no matter beef, pork, or fish are beautifully cleaned and cut and wrapped super good in the store. In China, people will go to the market and let the owner kill the chicken in front of them or ask the owner to cut the meat they want immediately.
As for vegetables, all the vegetables in the U.S. look like they are taking shower everyday: pretty clean. However, in China, people are fighting for buying vegetables that stick with soil, because they believe farmers just got those vegetables from field.
In China, people prefer buying fishes when they are still alive. You seldom see died fishes. However, here all the fishes are died and have been well cut already.
3. Different products
However, if you go to a Chinese or Asian grocery store, you could find a large amount of “strange food” that you may never think of eating them.
In Super L Ranch Market, (欣欣超市), Phoenix, not just chicken feet, there are lots of different parts of all kinds of animals. Pork solid blood, chicken kidneys, pork feet, chicken intestine and so on.
Different country has its won different culture. All we need to do is to respect the diversity and learn various culture and customs.
