chitlins

[PitRow]

So... back to my original question...

What is the difference between a chitlin and a casing? And can they be used for them. So far the only thing I've seen is Richtee saying they're probably chopped and useless for casing, which is most likely true.

Just curious.

[curious aardvark]

United States

Chitterlings are carefully cleaned and rinsed several times before they are boiled or stewed for several hours. A common practice is to place a halved onion in the pot to mitigate what many regard as a pungent, 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 cider vinegar and hot sauce as condiments, accompanied with coleslaw, or greens, and cornbread.
[edit] History

In colonial times, hogs were slaughtered in December. During slavery, in order to maximize profits, slave owners commonly fed their slaves in the cheapest manner possible. At hog butchering time, the preferred cuts of meat were reserved for the master's use with the remains, such as fatback, snouts, ears, neck bones, feet, and intestines given to the slaves for their consumption.[2] Wealthier individuals considered pig innards (offal) inedible and sometimes had them buried as garbage but enterprising slaves would unearth them under cover of darkness and salvage them.[3]

In 2003, the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture accepted the papers of Shauna Anderson and her business, The Chitlin Market, as part of its emerging collection of materials about African American celebrations, foods and foodways.[4]
[edit] Food safety caution

Care must be taken when preparing chitterlings, due to the possibility of disease being spread when they have not been cleaned or cooked properly. These diseases and bacteria include E. coli and Yersinia enterocolitica, as well as Salmonella. Chitterlings must be soaked and rinsed thoroughly in several different cycles of cool water, and repeatedly picked clean by hand, removing extra fat, undigested food, and specks of feces. The chitterlings are turned inside out, cleaned and boiled, sometimes in baking soda, and the water is discarded. The chitterlings can then be used in a recipe.

Um yeah make sure you pick out all the feces lol

basically the difference is. casings are sorted, rinsed, cleaned and sized and then packed carefully in salt.
chitlins are pulled out of the pig and dumped in a bucket and pretty much sold as is.

[JimmyJoeBob]

It appears that you can if you "want" to:

[CHIHT-lihnz; CHIHT-lingz] Popular in American Southern cooking, chitterlings are the small intestines of freshly slaughtered pigs. The word itself comes from the Middle English chiterling, a derivative of the Old English cieter ("intestines"). And, although properly called "chitterlings," the more common usage is chitlins, the casual version of which is chitts; slang terms include Kentucky oysters and wrinkled steak. Chitlins must be thoroughly cleaned in order to remove all fecal matter and bacteria. This labor-intensive process, which requires turning the intestines inside out, can take hours. Once cleaned, chitterlings must be simmered until tender (2 to 3 hours), a process that emits a detestable stench. They can then be broiled, barbecued, added to soups, battered and fried or used as a sausage casing. Chitlins have a chewy texture and an extremely high fat content (24 grams per 3-ounce serving). See also variety meats.

Food & Culture Encyclopedia:
Chitlins (Chitterlings)
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Chitlins or chitterlings, the small intestines harvested from a hog, are a frugal staple of myriad cuisines. After being soaked, thoroughly scraped, and cleaned, chitterlings have long been stuffed with forcemeats and spices and served as sausages. But chitterlings usage has never been limited to sausage making.

In England, cooks combine diced, sautéed chitterlings with mashed potatoes, form the mix into rounds, cap the resulting dumplings with grated cheese, and term the dish Down Derry. In and around Lyon, France, chitterlings, or andouillettes, are fried in lard or butter and served with vinegar and parsley.

No matter the cuisine or continent, chitterlings have long signaled linkage to the farm-based butchery of pigs. In rural districts worldwide, the cold weather killing of a pig and the removal of the chitterlings is a ritual of great import. In the American South, chitterlings, pulled hot from a cauldron of simmering water and eaten with a dose of vinegary or peppery condiment, are considered by many to be a reward for the hard work of farm-based butchery. This farm-to-table linkage has acquired special significance in the American South, where chitterlings (termed "chitlins" by most in an approximation of the prevailing pronunciation) have come to acquire a cultural importance that arguably exceeds traditional culinary usage.

In the book Chitlin Strut and Other Madrigals, the novelist and essayist William Price Fox of South Carolina asks the rhetorical question, "Who will eat a chitlin?" The answer: "You take a man and tie him to a stake and feed him bread and water and nothing else for seven days and seven nights, and then he will eat a chitlin. He won't like it, but he will eat it." Fox ascribes to the idea of chitlins as a marker of poverty. According to this often espoused rationale, chitlins and other pork offal products have long been a staple of the southern diet, and their presence was dictated not by preference but by a poverty-engendered creativity that could be claimed by all denizens of rural and impoverished southern districts.

White rural Southerners of the twentieth century, faced with the prospect of a rapidly industrializing and homogenizing region, doted on both boiled and deep-fried chitterlings. For these men and women, chitterlings served as both symbol and sustenance. By mid-century there were active chitterling eating clubs, like the Royal Order of Chitlin Eaters of Nashville, Tennessee, and the Happy Chitlin Eaters of Raleigh, North Carolina. The traditional song "Chitlin Cookin' Time in Cheatham County" gives voice to the same:

There's a quiet and peaceful county in the state of Tennessee

You will find it in the book they call geography

Not famous for its farming, its mines, or its stills

But they know there's chitlin cookin' in them Cheatham County hills

When it's chitlin cookin' time in Cheatham County I'll be courtin' in them Cheatham County hills

And I'll pick a Cheatham County chitlin cooker

I've a longin' that the chitlins will fill

African Americans with roots in the rural South also claimed a specific cultural meaning for chitlins. At an early date, forced reliance upon offal marked the foods of black southerners with a meaning different from those of whites. Until emancipation, African American food choice was restricted by the dictates of white society. Despite these restrictions, perhaps even as a retort of sorts, African Americans fashioned a cuisine of their own. Laws may have been enacted to regulate slave dress and codify slave mores, but in the kitchen freedom of expression was tolerated, even encouraged. As a result, African American cooks reinterpreted traditional foodways in an African-influenced manner and claimed chitterlings as distinctly African American.

Chitterling imagery pervades African American culture. The informal circuit of juke joints and clubs patronized by African Americans has long been called the "Chitlin Circuit." The bluesman Mel Brown, a veteran of the circuit, chose to title his early 1970s greatest hits album Eighteen Pounds of Unclean Chitlins and Other Greasy Blues Specialties.

When soul food came to the fore in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s, chitlins—along with watermelons and okra—were celebrated as a cultural sacrament. But not all African Americans embraced chitterlings as a preferred marker of identity. "You hear a lot of jazz about soul food," observed Eldridge Cleaver in 1968. "Take chitterlings: the ghetto blacks eat them from necessity while the black bourgeoisie has turned it into a mocking slogan . . . . Now that they have the price of a steak, here they come prattling about Soul Food."

The novelist Ralph Ellison understood how chitterlings functioned as both preferred cultural marker and liability. In the novel Invisible Man (1952), the protagonist imagines a scenario wherein he accuses Bledsoe, a pompous but influential educator, of a secret love of chitterlings:

I saw myself advancing upon Bledsoe . . . and suddenly whipping out a foot or two of chitterlings, raw, uncleaned, and dripping sticky circles on the floor as I shake them in his face, shouting: "Bledsoe, you're a shameless chitterling eater! I accuse you of relishing hog bowels! Ha! And not only do you eat them, you sneak and eat them in private when you think you're unobserved! You're a sneaking chitterling lover!"

[curious aardvark]

lol - so basically - pay the 99c, and see what you get when you open the packet.

I'm guessing that h&s would prevent them selling in modern shops with the feces still attached :-)

[JimmyJoeBob]

lol - so basically - pay the 99c, and see what you get when you open the packet.

I'm guessing that h&s would prevent them selling in modern shops with the feces still attached :-)

CA, you did read above about how the are made and served in England. I would have never thunk it. A tea drinkin' Soul Brouther. (ROTFLMAO smiley thingie)

[PitRow]

Actually, was doing a little research on my own, and it appears there IS a difference.

Natural casings are made from the submucosa, a layer of the intestine that consists mainly of collagen. The fat and the inner mucosa lining are removed. Natural casings tend to be brittle once cooked and tend to "snap" when the sausage is bitten. They may also rupture during the cooking process; often, this indicates that the cooking was done too rapidly. Natural casings may be hardened and rendered less permeable through drying and smoking processes. Natural casings are generally made from porcine, bovine or ovine intestines.

So, as CA said it looks like chitlins are just straight intestines, somewhat cleaned and packaged. But casings have the inner lining and fat removed, so it's basically just the outer lining of the intestine. No wonder they cost so much more.

Well... scratch that cost saving idea.

[Whisky Fish]

Found this from Ohio State University;

Interesting stuff, ,, Not too appetising, , ,but interesting

http://ohioline.osu.edu/sc156/sc156_12.html

Looks like a complicated process to me

[etcher1]

Sounds like their more trouble than their worth.

[curious aardvark]

lol yeah, they do look like a lot of work just to make your house smell like the inside of a pig.

But then there are people who'll spend 12 hours cooking a piece of meat, having to constantly check temps, check the meat wood, charcoal, spray it, wrap it in foil, inject it etc.

You'd think someone who'd do that would be able to prepare chitlins

lol

[Bbqgoddess]

Mike
I have never seen them for sale... I dunno about the casing thing.. but I do know that I will try anything at least once... (yes, now leave that alone) and I worked with a wonderful woman from the south a while back, her momma was making chitlin's for a holiday deal and she brought me in some to try, fried... damn yummy stuff I have to tell ya.. like pot liqour.. who knew? certainly not me on this side of the country.. so... when cleaned and cooked properly.. they were delicious. Haggis one day I will give it a try for sure. Not my "peoples food" but then a lot I have tried have not been, the chitlins, I just had to try, it is a big part of the history of our country. Something carried down regardless of the circumstances and I will for sure try it! Gotta admit, I wasn't there when they cleaned them.. but then when my neighbors mom make menudo I am not there when she cleans the "tripa" and she makes the BEST menudo ever!
Just like cheese sometimes stinky is GREAT~!!

[Cajunsmoke13]

They sell them by the bucket in the stores down here. You all can come down to the Annual Chitlin Festival if you want...

Louisiana Chitlin Festival
02/28/2009
Louisiana Chitlin Festival in Ferriday, Louisiana.

Annual festival started 20 years ago. The party has grown from about 10-20 people to 1000. It's kind of like a Louisiana Woodstock

[GOT14U]

Sorta like menudo....I love it but some people just can't get over eating cows stomach....you definitely know when some one is cooking it.

[Cajunsmoke13]

Maybe someone should make a chitlin stuffed fattie...

[wutang]

Maybe someone should make a chitlin stuffed fattie...

You are almost on the verge of an inside-out haggis at that point.

[chefrob]

Sorta like menudo....I love it but some people just can't get over eating cows stomach....you definitely know when some one is cooking it.

chitlins ain't tripe!