British BBQ Society Forums

I always see these for sale - are they smoker fodder, or best braised?

Anyone got a recipe either way?

I reckon - and they're cheap enough to take a gamble on - that a very slow cook would see them amazing no matter the method, because they're mostly connective tissue - there's very little actual meat there. I thinkf they'd get good and melty and not manage to dry out too much. But all the recipes I know go in for a long slow simmer before anything else happens.

I did once bone a handful of them for a complicated dish and it took forever and felt very fiddly.

I am actual not a huge fan of them myself because I have over-often encountered them being all wobybly bits, but I have watched them being sucked dry to tiny bones by other ppl plenty of times.

I'm gonna pick some up soon, I suspect they're better braised

Morrissons always have them.

There isn't one near me unfortunately, but the butcher I go to always has the weird cuts in

I'm not sure they would work, on the smoker and the skin and fat would just go kinda wobbly, in a jelly like way, unless you baked them at high heat afterwards which is what I do with big sheets of crackling (I smoke for a couple of hours then stick it in the oven)

Never eaten them myself but I always thought people slow cooked them to get flavour into a dish rather than for meat.

Good luck if you try it though, let us know the results

Hi All
I saw a recipe somewhere, where they were brined and then rubbed and hot smoked at 250f for 4-5 hours to an internal temp of 160f, then pulled, bones discarded and used to flavour beans on the pit.

Cheers
Si

CyderPig wrote:Hi All
I saw a recipe somewhere, where they were brined and then rubbed and hot smoked at 250f for 4-5 hours to an internal temp of 160f, then pulled, bones discarded and used to flavour beans on the pit.

Cheers
Si

That sounds like my kind of dish. As has been said - they don't have any meat on them, but lots of flavour. Added to a bean dish I suspect they would be yummy.

I'm not sure if any of you have tried cow-foot - but it is also very very nice. No meat, just bone, cartilage , and marrow. It's not the hoof itself - but the bit between the hoof and the shin. A Nigerian friend of mine showed me how to cook it up and it is awesome. Takes hours of boiling though - but all the cartilage softens down like butter. Yum!

like butter eh.... hmm, I had the same reaction to that as to when my Chinese friend was trying to extoll the virtues of chicken feet. It's about the texture she said.... ok, even so.... no thanks!

JamsCowbell wrote:like butter eh.... hmm, I had the same reaction to that as to when my Chinese friend was trying to extoll the virtues of chicken feet. It's about the texture she said.... ok, even so.... no thanks!

I had some chicken feet last weekend. Well not the claws, but the 'shin' part of the chicken food between the drumstick and the claw. They were quite nice actually!

You all need to open your culinary horizons a bit