Simmered southern-fried chicken gizzards

This is a follow up to my previous chicken gizzard post. That, somehow, has become the top result on Google for people searching for information about buttermilk and chicken gizzards. On behalf of those information seekers (and my own curiosity), I wanted to directly compare the other popular method of prepping gizzards for frying: a twenty minute simmer.

Beyond that change, I did the same egg wash and used the same spiced flour which, it seems, has been sitting in my refrigerator untouched for the last two months. That shouldn't be a problem, should it? I'll edit the post and let you know if I get sick later today.


Here's the result:

The biggest difference, obviously, is that these gizzards are already cooked before they go into the oil. The simmered gizzards are noticeably more tender, but they're also less juicy than the buttermilk-brined gizzards. That's both from the cooking and the soaking so it's a pretty significant differential. It seems to me that if you want perfectly tender chicken, you shouldn't be cooking organ meats so I'm weighing the moistness more heavily. Advantage: buttermilk.

A second difference is in the texture of the breading. Compare the two pictures (here's the other) and you can see that the buttermilk-brined gizzards are significantly more knobbly-crunchy. It's the difference between KFC regular and extra crispy so a matter of personal preference. No advantage.

A third difference is in the flavor. I'm not sure I can fairly judge here as I salted the simmering water and that combined with the heavily salted flour coating over-salted the final results. Looking past that, the simmered gizzards are missing a dimension of tanginess from the buttermilk that I enjoyed and the gaminess has been minimized. I miss the added complexity. Also, the dryness of the simmered gizzards (probably even without the extra salt, I think) compelled me to use a sauce to compensate. I prefer having the option to dip or not to dip. Advantage: buttermilk.

A fourth difference is how long the recipes took. I made these for lunch on impulse and I was eating less than 40 minutes later. The buttermilk gizzards soaked for 48 hours. Advantage: simmering.

It comes down to convenience versus depth of flavor and texture. Isn't that always the way? I did happily finish my bowlful of simmered gizzards and I can't help noticing that I'm having lunch today and not two days from now so I can't be entirely negative here. But my foodie impulses can't be denied and I have to come down on the buttermilk-brine side if you can spare the time.

Buttermilk-brined southern-fried chicken gizzards

For some of you, I know, this is standard fare--nothing worth blogging about, particularly since it isn't my recipe. But for me this is exotic ethnic fare and one step closer to my unfulfilled pledge to eat more offal.

Also, I don't think I've ever soaked chicken in buttermilk before--the recipe calls it a brine, but there's no salt so it's just a soak--even though it's a standard Southern technique. There seem to be a few different reasons to do so. The acid in the buttermilk tenderizes chicken and, a lot of recipes say, keeps it moist. Those both seem logical enough. Acid breaks down tough proteins; Normal meat might get mushy, but tough meat gets tender. And soaking in any water-based liquid plumps up meat which lets it stay moist through cooking. Gizzards can use the help in both regards, but for a whole chicken, these days it's tough to find the old well-exercised birds would need this sort of processing.

A lot of places also say that a buttermilk soak makes the breading extra crispy. That doesn't make a lick of sense, but it does work and I think I've figured out why.

[If you'd like a bit more information, later I tried prepping the gizzards by simmering instead and compared the results. That post is here.]

The recipe I used called for soaking one pound of chicken gizzards and a coarsely chopped small onion in buttermilk to cover (maybe a cup and a half) for a day or two. I did two only because it was too hot in the kitchen the first evening.

After the soak, I drained but didn't rinse the gizzards and cut them into pieces about an inch across, removing the sinew-iest bits.


For the breading, there's an egg dip and then a simple seasoned flour coating: 1 cup flour, plenty of salt and spices of choice. My choice was Gullah Cuisine's Fried Chicken Seasoning. The recipe suggests Old Bay which could be interesting, too.


And then deep frying at 350 degrees for two to three minutes. I did a rather better job of regulating my oil temperature this time than I usually do so I'm quite pleased with that.



Here are the results--perfectly golden brown, crispy, spicy, chewy--but not too chewy--meaty, slightly gamy and slightly tangy. Yummy. In most fried chicken, the meat has a hard time competing with a highly flavored breading, but the gizzards definitely hold their own and the combination of flavors is very nice.

You can see the lovely knobbly crust. That's the extra-crispy crust from the buttermilk. Specifically, it's from the excess egg-and-buttermilk mixture that dripped into the flour as I breaded the gizzards. Because the buttermilk is thicker than standard milk and certainly much thicker than a watery brine, you get nice cohesive little lumps of batter instead of just generally wet flour. The later the batch, the more lumps adhered to the meat with more crispy flaky convolutions on the final product. Luckily, there was plenty of the breading left, so I'm keeping the leftovers in the refrigerator as a head start for the next time. Do other people do that? I don't think I've heard of anyone doing that.

Back in business

The repair-guy came in a fixed a major water leak in the replacement refrigerator which, he said, should do the trick. But the next day it was still at 50 degrees so I complained again and, sick of my whining, the handyman (who outsources his appliance repair so it's not the same guy) came by and gave me an actually new refrigerator. Yay!

In retrospect, the replacement refrigerator was technically working correctly. The compressor was pumping out cold air, but with an underpowered fan dribbling it in and a leaky door seal letting it right back out again it may have just been approaching a new equilibrium in the safe temperature zone very slowly. Or maybe not. I can't say I care much at this point and I'm sure they can find a tenant who'll use it mainly to store vodka and mixers who won't mind if it's a little warm.

I've been off restocking and slowly getting back into the cooking mode. Now that I don't have a regular audience of people trying to figure out what to do with their CSA share I have to raise the bar on how interesting a dish has to be to be post-worthy. After this post, anyway; this post is mainly human interest.

I decided to try using the multi-grain blend I had such trouble with a while back. Since then I learned that adding salt to whole grains makes them take forever to cook and I figured that must have been my problem. It still didn't come out right this time around, but it did come closer. The baby garbanzos were less undercooked and the Israeli couscous less overcooked at the ten minute mark. Unfortunately, not salting meant that the pasta--the couscous and the orzo--tasted pretty crummy. If any of you have forgotten to salt your pasta water you know that salting afterwards doesn't entirely fix the problem. Plus I didn't get to toast the couscous which is an important step in building flavors. I stirred in shrimp, prosciutto and a bit of onion sautéed in olive oil and seasoned with smoked paprika and thyme and I ended up with an OK dish, but it could have been a lot better. I'm done with ill-conceived grain blends.

Another not quite note-worthy dish I made this week is beer battered chicken gizzards, squash, eggplant and mushrooms. The main goal here was to use some of the surviving CSA vegetables before they finally started rotting. Looking around at the various beer batter recipes I settled on this interesting one that calls for separating an egg and folding a meringue into the batter. One egg white is too little to beat in the mixer so I had to do it by hand. I think I managed a pretty good job considering and the batter ended up nicely light and fluffy. Briefly. The first batch turned out beautifully, but the process of coating the chicken and vegetables burst the bubbles pretty quick. I'll use a recipe with baking powder next time. The batter is yellowish because I used the Gullah-style seasoning mix I picked up in South Carolina a while back. I was going to recommend taht you mail order it from the Gullah Cuisine website and I think you should because it's just what southern fried chicken is supposed to taste like, but you can't. Sorry. I had a few different dips planned but I didn't make any because I didn't want to mask the flavor.

And I made another loaf of no-knead bread and once again I screwed it up. I keep forgetting to adjust for the humid Miami weather and make it too wet to support its weight when it rises. It's tasty (as I add whole wheat and rye flour) but it's dense and too flat to make a sandwich with. It's still good for croûtons and at least I've figured out the problem. Next time I'll do better.

I also made an ice cream, but that deserves its own post so more on that later.