Procrastinating by spending hours in the kitchen instead of the library is a great way to fail school.
Anyway, I bought some chicken giblets1 the other day and I’ve been really looking forward to cooking them. If you’ve never had giblets and are a little grossed out by them – don’t worry! They don’t taste strange, they’re just extremely chewy. So if you like tendons, you’re sure to like giblets (gizzards are my favourite)!
Now this recipe is an original so don’t go thinking I’m just copying and pasting some disgusting chicken innards recipe on here. When I read up on gizzards, I realized that they have to be cooked for a long time. You know what else is simmered for a long time? Tea eggs! One of my favourite street-vendor-foods (and extremely easy to make), tea eggs are simmered in a pot with soy sauce, star anise (or five spice powder), and green tea. Hence, that is how I decided to infuse flavour into my gizzards! I call this dish “Dragon Gills” (because all Chinese dishes have crazy names).
Ingredients:
0.2kg giblets – separate hearts and livers from gizzards
1/2 an onion, sliced into squares
2 slices of fresh ginger
3 tsp salt
2 tsp ground pepper or 1 thsp peppercorns
1 tsp green tea leaves
3 bay leaves
2 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
0.5 tbsp Guilin chili sauce2
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine or sherry (or Grand Marnier in my case, since I had neither)
Instructions:
- Bring a pot of water to boil and add gizzards. DO NOT add hearts or livers. Scoop/rinse off the foam, refill pot with water, and bring to boil again.
- Add ginger, salt, peppers/peppercorns, tea leaves and bay leaves. Turn heat down to medium and cook for 30min.
- Add 2 tbsp soy sauce, turn heat down to medium, and cook for another 20-30min.
- Heat a wok/pan and add olive oil.
- Pour pot contents into wok. Remove bay leaves (and tea leaves if possible). Add 1 tsp salt and 2 tbsp soy sauce and cook for 2min.
- Add chicken hearts and onions. Sautee for a while, and add Guilin chili sauce.
- Finally, add chicken livers, dark soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine, and sugar. Mix constantly.
- Chicken liver does not need to be cooked long. Remove from heat and serve hot with white rice.
- Technically, giblets are gizzard, heart, and liver, but there was no liver in mine. [↩]
I recommend Lee Kum Kee’s Guilin chili sauce. This is a very versatile chili sauce that can be used with many Chinese dishes containing meats. It is not very spicy, does not overwhelm your taste buds, and enhances flavour without affecting other ingredients. [↩]
I have not done anything with chicken giblets yet. That dish certainly looks good though.
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I too love gizzards
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I’m also in the gizzard group! Ha, I like the slight crunch. Usually, we have it with Hainanese Chicken Rice. Not many stalls offer gizzards and liver but if there is, we will always order a small appetizer combo that goes well with the chicken and the chicken rice, not forgetting some chili + fresh grated ginger.
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