Recipe: Fried Chitterlings and Hog Maws Soul Food Recipes

Quoting Willie Crawford from his Chitterlings site:

In my part of the country, chitterlings come in 10 pound buckets. Hog maws come in smaller packages found in the freezer case. If you can find the larger containers and like the recipe, simply use several times the ingredients to end up with the same percentages. Local supermarkets also carry smaller packages. After cleaning the chitterlings of the fat you will only end up with about half as much volume.

Ingredients:

2 pounds hog maws (pig stomach)
2 pounds chitterlings (pig intestines)
3 quarts water
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper (flakes)
1 medium peeled onion (white or yellow)

The hog maws are the thickest and will therefore take the longest to cook. Rinse them thoroughly as you trim off the excess fat. Put them in a 6 quart pot along with your 3 quarts water, onion, pepper, and salt. Bring them to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and cook for 1 hour 15 minutes.

While maws are cooking, rinse chitterlings thoroughly and trim the extra fat off them. Like most organ meats, they have a lot of fat. Add chitterlings to pot after maws have cooked for 1 hour 15 minutes. Cook another 1 hour 30 minutes or until tender. Add a little extra water if necessary.

Prepare a large cast iron skillet with 1/4 stick of butter. Remove maws and chitterlings from pot and slice. I use to slice them right in the preheated skillet although you can use a cutting board. Then stir with a large metal spoon as you lightly brown them. You can pour out the water from the pot, including the onion. The onion added a little flavor and made them smell nicer while simmering.

A variation on this recipe is to slice the chitterlings and hog maws into pieces as above, but them put them back in the pot with the stock. Again, you can get rid of the onion. Cover the pot and simmer the cut up mixture for another 50 minutes.

If you don't like onion or don't have onion, you can add four or five bay leaves to the mixture instead.. Again, you throw the bay leaves away before frying or cooking down the chitterlings.

By now the hog maws and chitterlings should be thoroughly done and almost falling apart. You can serve them with your favorite side dishes such as greens, maccaroni and cheese, or rice. I actually prefer to eat them by themselves, with several splashes of hot sauce. However, they are fattening and it's tough not to eat too much. So you probably should have a side dish.

Store the leftovers in the refrigerator. Like so many other great soul food dishes, chitlins taste even better after the flavor has soaked in for a few hours. The leftovers won't last long.

For food like you thought you'd never taste again, buy Willie Crawford's SOUL FOOD RECIPES