Budget cooking: if you'd told me...

If you'd told me a year ago that for dinner I'd be cooking BBQ chicken feet and chitlin fried rice for dinner, I'd have thought, "Eating it? Sure. Cooking it? Naaaah..."

And I would have been wrong.

I started off by marinating my chicken feet in some Japanese barbecue sauce. I got it all mixed in and rubbed over the alien hands.

I let those sit for a while before tossing them into my Dutch oven with a mix of sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce. Got them simmering, flipped the paws a few times to get a little color on them, then added in the rest of my ingredients.

I decided to add in some peeled and diced Roma tomato, some diced onion, and a couple of sliced mushrooms. I also poured in a bit of red wine and water to give everything some liquid to cook in.

I covered that up and let it simmer for a couple hours while my chitlins boiled on a separate burner.

When the chitlins were finished boiling, I dredged/egged/bread crumbed them again for my fried rice. This part doesn't have much new except that I mixed some cayenne into the bread crumbs (tasty and not much heat). Sorry if you're looking for something more inspired.

The rice included mushroom, onion, garlic, miso paste, and green bell pepper. Nothing fancy. Just tasty and beautifully aromatic.

I really wasn't sure how to plate everything, so I just did my best to not make it look weird. I think I did alright. Also, I'm now out of chicken feet. Just got a few more pounds of chitlins to get through. I'm...ready to do something else.

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