Jewish tradition considers the addition of chicken feet the secret to successful broth. And, as they say in south america, ''good broth will resurrect the dead''.
Take the chicken feet, and throw them in boiling water for about 5 to 10 minutes. Make sure the water is boiling before you put the feet in, so that the meat retains its taste (if you put the feet in cold water and then heat it up, the juices will go into the water). Discard the water, and this is what you have. Cut the nails and black spots off. If the feet came with the skin on, peel it off- sometimes the black spots come off with the skin, but sometimes you do have to cut them off. You can give the skins to your dog, but not the nails. How to know if your feet came with the skin or not? If they did come with skin, the skin will look a bit like snake skin after the first boiling. You can see in the picture that the feet do have some skin in them.
When you are done cleaning the feet, rinse them and place them in a pot with cold water and onions, celery and carrots. I don't measure the water, but just make sure that the feet and vegetables are covered by it. Here I used a 1/2 onion, scallions, and white carrots. I also put in pepper corns, a bit of seaweed and a bay leaf. You can put whatever herbs you'd like. Bring to a boil, partially cover and simmer on low heat for about 4 hours. You can use the stock as is, or remove the lid and let it simmer for another hour or two, in order to reduce the stock a bit. Drain, and save the feet for your dog, or your best friend's dog.
This is the stock after 4 hours of simmering with a lid ajar. It smells wonderful, and has a rich golden color. It tastes very rich, so I usually combine it with water for soup bases, but you can definitely use it as is.
This is just to show how much stock you get out of a few chicken feet. There is a third container as well, it just didn't look as pretty as these two :)
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