From Pickled To Braised, a Guide To the Best Chicken Feet Dishes From China
Americans who have encountered chicken feetat dim sum restaurants probably already know that the dish is popular in China. Some stories claim that people originally began eating it in order to save every part of the slaughtered animal before the age of industrial farming. This is not completely true. The earliest record of chicken feet as food is in a chronicle compiled in the 3rd century BC. “When the duke eats chicken, he must eat the feet, and wouldn’t be satiated until he has eaten thousands of them,” the author wrote. This might be an exaggeration, but reducing food waste probably wasn’t on the duke’s mind.