Chitterlings
Chitterlings (/ˈtʃɪt(ər)lɪŋz/ CHIT-linz), sometimes spelled chitlins or chittlins, are a food most commonly made from the small intestines of pigs,[1] though cow, lamb, goose and goat may also be used.
[3] The recipe explained the use of calves', rather than the more usual pigs', intestines with the comment that "[these] sort of ... puddings must be made in summer, when hogs are seldom killed".
[5] Linguist Paul Anthony Jones has written, "in the late 1500s a chitterling was an ornate type of neck ruff, so called because its frilled edge looked like the folds of a slaughtered animal's entrails".
As pigs are a common source of meat in many parts of the world, the dish known as chitterlings can be found in most pork-eating cultures.
Chitterlings made from pig intestines are popular in many parts of Europe, and are also eaten in the southern United States.
A similar dish from La Rioja is embuchados, and from the province of Aragon, madejas, all made with sheep's intestines and served as tapas.
George Sturt, writing in 1919 details the food eaten by his farming family in Farnborough when he was a child (probably around 1830): During the winter they had chance to weary of almost every form and kind of pig-meat: hog's puddings, gammons, chitterlings, souse, salted spareribs—they knew all the varieties and welcomed any change.
[10]Chitterlings are the subject of a song by 1970s Scrumpy and Western comedy folk band, The Wurzels, who come from the southwest of England.
Chinchulín (in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) or chunchule (in Chile) (from the Quechua ch'unchul, meaning 'intestine') is the cow's small intestine used as a foodstuff.
A common practice is to place a halved onion in the pot to mitigate the very unpleasant odor that can be particularly strong when the chitterlings begin to cook.
Chitterlings sometimes are battered and fried after the stewing process and commonly are served with apple cider vinegar and hot sauce as condiments.
[13] Chitterlings have a strong connection with African-American soul food in the U.S. A common assumption is that the Southern consumption of chitterlings arose in the pre–Civil War era of slavery when less desirable parts of the pig, like pigs feet and hog jowls, were given to slaves, while the better cuts went to the slave masters, who were thus said to be "living high on the hog".
In fact, if you look at slave narratives and oral histories of the era, there were quite a few references of making chitlins for the master, and eating intestines was something that was in white culture for centuries before we get to the American South.
[7] In 1952's Invisible Man, novelist Ralph Ellison touched on this mixed cultural role of chitterlings among African Americans.
[13] Prominent activists from Eldridge Cleaver to Elijah Muhammad to Dick Gregory criticized chitterlings (and often soul food in general[14]), but the dish was also seen as "a way of celebrating the resistance and spirit of survival and creativity that emerged despite the horrific history of racism in this country" in Miller's words.
[15] In 2007, the Prince Georges County, Maryland government shut down The Chitlin Market when the restaurant's location was rezoned from commercial to residential.
[14] In the 20th century, eating clubs devoted to the dish arose in cities from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Nashville, Tennessee.
[14] The town of Salley, South Carolina, has held an annual Chitlin' Strut Festival since 1966 on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and includes a fried chitterling–eating contest.
In Japan, chitterlings or motsu (もつ) are often fried and sold on skewers or kushi (串) in kushikatsu (串カツ) or kushiage (串揚げ) restaurants and street vendor pushcarts.
It is also served as a soup called motsuni (もつ煮) with miso, ginger, and finely chopped green onions to cut the smell, as well as other ingredients and internal organs such as the stomach, depending on the preparer.
In Fukuoka, it is called motsunabe (もつ鍋) and is served as a nabe stew along with cabbage, chives, mungbean sprout, and tofu.
