Chicken Feet

Feet braised, fried, then steamed, so the skin puffs and then softens to jelly.

Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, oyster sauce.

Ingredients

• 800 g chicken feet, nails trimmed
• 2 tablespoons maltose, or honey
• 1 litre vegetable oil, for deep frying, which is poured off
• 2 tablespoons fermented black beans, rinsed and crushed
• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 dried red chillies, chopped

Method

1. Trim the nails off every foot. Simmer them in water for 10 minutes, then drain and dry them very thoroughly — THREE STAGES follow and the first will throw hot oil at you if there is any water left.
2. Rub the maltose over the feet and let them dry on a rack for 20 minutes. The sugar is what blisters the skin.
3. Heat the oil to 180C and fry them in small batches for 3 minutes, with a lid half over the pan. The skin will puff up and go pale gold. Lift them out.
4. Drop the fried feet straight into cold water and leave them 30 minutes. The sudden cold is what sets the puffed skin away from the bone — this is the step that makes them worth eating rather than merely cooked.
5. Drain them. Mix the beans, oyster sauce, soy sauce, wine, sugar, garlic and chillies and turn the feet through it.
6. Steam them in a covered dish for 90 minutes, until the skin is gelatinous and slides off the bone under a little pressure.
7. Serve them in the dish with their liquid.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under China · All recipes