Why and how to clean chicken gizzards?

In the hands of an experienced and skillful housewife, even the most ordinary offal can become an exquisite delicacy. If you know how to clean chicken gizzards and how to further process them, you can get the most delicate dish that melts in your mouth and disappears from home plates in a few minutes.

Modern stores sell pre-processed blanks, but they also need attention before use. And if you decide to save money or purchase chicken gizzards from a private farmer, then you will have to spend at least an hour (per kilogram of product) on their mandatory cleaning. The main thing here is not to rush and methodically carry out all stages of processing, otherwise the components will retain a specific taste and aroma, which will spoil the overall impression of the dish.

Features of the offal purification process

In order to clean completely unprepared chicken gizzards, we will need a container with cold water in which we will place the processed products, a cutting board and a sharp knife, a stream of very cold water and the workpieces themselves.

The manipulation will look like this:

• We treat the board and knife with cold water, and pre-rinse the ventricles. It is better to close the doors to the kitchen and open the windows, because... the procedure will be accompanied by the spread of an unpleasant odor throughout the room.
• We completely process one product at a time.If you cut all the chicken gizzards at once and only then start cleaning them, the smell will be unbearable.
• Cut one component lengthwise, open it, clean out all the contents and rinse thoroughly under running cold water. Some housewives use salt for better processing.
• Next, we remove the yellow film lining the surface of the organ from the inner surface of the ventricle. If you do not clean this fatty tissue, the dish will not turn out soft, and these formations cannot be chewed.

Tip: If the yellow films are very dense and come off with difficulty, you can first scald the chicken gizzards with boiling water, but do not soak them in water, but immediately drain the liquid. Next, we proceed according to the scheme, using very cold water for cleaning.

• There are soft cartilages at one end of the blanks; they also need to be removed. We do the same with the remaining fat. They are often very dirty and smell bad. The dish will only benefit from such thorough cleaning.
• We wash the cleaned element again and place it in a bowl of cold water. You also need to clean all subsequent chicken gizzards.

If you have to deal with pre-processed offal, then you should not limit yourself to washing it. In factories, products are not manually cleaned, but mechanically, so their quality may not be the highest. It is better to inspect each component, removing all unnecessary according to the principle outlined above. Immediately after this, you can begin preparing the chosen dish or keep the ingredients in cold water for a short time.

What next can be done with semi-finished products?

Regardless of how you plan to cook chicken gizzards, it is recommended to first boil them in salted water.To do this, fill them with cold water, bring to a boil and boil over medium heat for 1.5-2 hours. Salt the workpiece to taste only at the end of cooking. For boiling, you can use both whole and cut into two parts elements.

At home, chicken gizzards can be prepared in one of the following ways:

• Roasting. Cut the boiled product into cubes or strips and place in a frying pan with well-heated vegetable oil. Lightly fry, stirring constantly. After the golden crust appears, add the onion cut into half rings, knead and add some salt. After a couple of minutes, add grated carrots and spices to taste. Culinary experts recommend combining chicken gizzards with basil, cumin, mint, sesame, black pepper, and cumin. If you want to get a tasty gravy, then at the next stage add sour cream, mix everything, add a little boiled water and mix everything again. Simmer under a closed lid over very low heat for at least a quarter of an hour. The sauce will be thicker and richer if you add a little flour fried in a piece of butter. The main thing is to mix everything well so that there are no lumps.

• Preparation of pate. Grind the pre-boiled offal in a blender or pass through a meat grinder. The taste of the pate will be more pronounced if you add fried onions, spices, and a little meat broth. A real delicacy is obtained by mixing ventricles with chicken liver and heart.

• Stewed in soy sauce. Pour soy sauce over the pre-boiled ventricles, mix with half an onion, cut into half rings, and leave for at least half an hour. Then put this whole mixture in a deep frying pan and simmer until done. With this approach, we add salt very carefully, because soy sauce will give the main taste to the dish. We use spices to a minimum, otherwise the aroma will be very strong.

As a side dish for one of the listed dishes, it is best to use potatoes, cabbage or traditional pasta. If you learn how to properly clean the offal, you can not use it immediately, but freeze it. Then it will take much less time to prepare your favorite dish.