Gizzard Wizard

I forgot that I took a picture of the cottage cheese I made when I wrote my last post. Here it is:

Cottage cheese on the right, whey on the left. 

When I was grocery shopping the other day, my normal warehouse discount grocery was carrying chicken gizzards and heart! I was pretty surprised; I'd never seen any organ meat there before. (I never buy meat there anyway because the origins are never good.)  But, when I saw a packet of chicken gizzards for $1.88, I let myself compromise with the "humane certified" but definitely not truly pastured meat wrapped in styrofoam and cellophane. I'd wanted for awhile to make a gizzard confit like I'd tasted in my Organ Meats class, but it was too much bother to call in a special order to the meat market and drive over there. 

So yesterday, I made it. Gizzards Confit. The benefit of a confit is that the small meat pieces are stored submerged in solid fat so they keep in the fridge for months! I always need quick snacks like that.

I cut the pieces up with kitchen shears so I didn't have to touch it. 

Finished. Just like beef jerky.

Just cook gizzards slowly, covered in a saturated fat (coconut or lard) until "very tender." I didn't quite cover them because I'm frugal, but I put a lot of coconut oil in there. After about an hour, I let it cool and put it in the fridge. Today, I ate some. Yum! They are irresistible!

Interestingly, I looked for lard at both Safeway and Trader Joe's, and neither sells it. It gets a bad rap, but is decidedly better for you than Crisco. I just thought it was interesting that a store like Safeway has literally thousands of "products"--permutations of processed corn and not one of the most basic staples that people used for millenia. 

If you want DuckTales fruit-snacks and neon cheez puffs, aisle 7. If you want a basic traditional cooking oil, your out of luck."