Chicken is one of the most universally loved and eaten meats. A simple whole roast chicken is a thing of beauty, just ask chef Thomas Keller.
When you buy a chicken whole from a butcher, often its giblets (the edible offal) can be found in a plastic bag inside the bird. When you buy a chicken from a supermarket, the giblets are sometimes removed, as people can be squeamish about them. However, these can add a great richness to gravy for example, so it’s well worth trying to find a chicken with them in.
Many people will have been introduced to chicken liver via pâté and what would a hearty, rustic French-style meal be without a rich and smooth chicken liver parfait to kick things off? Chicken gizzard, a muscle found in the digestive tract, is a popular street food around the world and is great dark meat for braising. Livers, gizzards, hearts and other offal are popular as a skewer food from Mexico to Thailand, and up to Japan.
Chicken comb, typically taken from the rooster, is used for a type of Japanese yakitori called kanmuri, as well as in the Italian dish of cibrèo (which also makes use of wattles, which are the fleshy parts under the beak, as well as livers, hearts and testicles), and dim sum. The comb will need to be blanched in boiling water to remove the skin before cooking, and the texture is quite gelatinous. In this way chicken comb is quite similar to chicken feet, a chicken part that is particularly popular in Chinese cuisine, although the comb is boneless.
Chicken necks, though often used for stock and usually found in the same bag as the giblets, can make a tasty deep fried snack or can be stripped and skewered. The meat is rich and flavoursome. The same can be said for chicken tail, used, for example, in a yakitori dish called bonjiri.
Of course, one of the best uses for a chicken carcass/bones is to make stock. And last but not least, who can forget chicken skin, which is great when turned into crackling or simply eaten straight off the bird.