Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Chicken feet soup?

Sunday, 7-10-11

If you’ve read my blog before you’ll remember me saying more than once that the Pastoral Team likes to feed me things that they don’t normally serve while Kathy is here. Well, today for lunch we had chicken feet soup. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit. I saw one chicken foot in the soup. I’m guessing there was a second one but I didn’t going poking around in the soup looking for it. They’ve cooked soup with all the organs many times but I’ve never seen feet; I often look at the soup in the pot while it’s being cooked because it smells so good. Now, could there have been chicken feet cooked in the soup I’ve eaten before and I just didn’t notice? Sure.

I felt really culturally insensitive and kind of silly, but I just couldn’t bring myself to eat the soup. I’m not sure why because I’ve eaten chicken feet before when I had dim sum at a Chinese restaurant with my parents and in-laws. We all tried the chicken feet, but only my father-in-law and husband actually ate several feet. There wasn’t a whole lot of meat and they were kind of fatty/mushy. Maybe I would have liked it more if it was crispier.

After making the decision not to eat the soup I decided to Google ‘chicken feet soup’ to see what I could find. One website said: “The ‘Eww’ factor of chicken feet I think comes from the fact that chicken feet look a lot like our hands.” That wasn’t it for me at all. To be perfectly honest, it was all the things that were on the chicken feet before they became soup. Now that I have owned a chicken and have seen what his feet look like the thought of that in my soup made me a little uncomfortable. Also bear in mind that this is El Salvador, where the safety and sanitation standards are different than in the US. If you’ve been here and have gone to the meat market you know what I’m talking about.

All in all, I’m not saying it’s wrong that people eat chicken feet in soup or that people shouldn’t be eating it, I’m only saying that I prefer not to eat it. I wish I could get over my apprehensions about eating chicken feet soup, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen. Too bad, because from what I’ve read, chicken feet in soup are actually healthy and make a delicious broth. Some websites have talked about how wonderfully gelatinous the soup is that results from chicken feet. I’m not sure I would ever use the words “wonderfully” and “gelatinous” in the same sentence. Now, I’m not sure how I feel about jell-o.



The mysterious chicken foot



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep, that's a chicken foot all right. At least with the soup you wouldn't have to eat the actual foot but I can still see the "eww" factor.

Alisha Lundberg said...

You, who ate at least 8 chicken feet at the Chinese restaurant, can see the "eww" factor?

Anonymous said...

After seeing all the things that chickens in El Salvador walk through and the sanitation standards, as you said, yes I can see the "eww" factor. Does that mean I wouldn't try the soup anyway? Probably not.

Anonymous said...

LOL! My husband loves sopa de pata (and many weird delights like brains, iguana, armadillo...). Totally agree on the eek factor but I can manage to eat the soup if it has feet floating in it, I just give them to hubby!

on that note, I played a practical joke on my other-in-law once. She had killed a chicken in her usual hang it upside down and break the neck fashion, and left it dangling while she went to do other things for a moment. Meanwhile, I grabbed a bottle of nailpolish and painted it's little toe nails a bright pink, just for yucks to mess with her when she came back. We all got a giggle out of that. Country humor in E.S.

Alisha Lundberg said...

Fun stuff! I have a pet rooster and thought about painting his toenails at one point. Though I'm not sure I could get him to hold still.

I haven't had armadillo here or brains, but I have tried iguana. It was tough and tasted like chicken. It's interesting that I didn't want to eat the chicken foot soup but don't seem to have a problem with bugs. I'm remembering posting on your blog how I saw bee larva in honey once and wanted to eat it.