Most Westerners probably look at chicken feet and think there is no way they could taste good.
They are just too off-putting.
You see the claws, the bones, the shape of the foot, and your mind has already decided what the experience is going to be before you have even tried it.
But then you try chicken feet at dim sum, especially steamed in black bean sauce, and they are actually really good.
Soft, rich, savoury, and full of flavour.
Chicken feet are naturally rich in collagen, but what interests me more is the experience of eating something that your mind had already rejected.
Because the strange thing is that the food did not change.
Your idea of it did.
In Chinese cuisine, chicken feet are a normal dish. They are often served at dim sum and are sometimes called “phoenix claws.”
Something one culture might look at as a leftover or an undesirable part of the animal can become a delicacy somewhere else.
And that makes me wonder how often we do this with other things.
How many things do we decide we do not like before we have actually experienced them?
Food.
Music.
Places.
Ideas.
Ways of doing things.
Sometimes we are right.
But sometimes the idea we have about something is the exact thing keeping us away from something we might actually enjoy.
That is what I like about chicken feet.
They are almost a perfect example of something that looks like it should be bad, but once you actually try it, you realize there was something good sitting there the whole time.
The treasure was not really hidden.
Our assumption was just sitting on top of it.