Chicken Giblets in Tomato Sauce with Pasta
The word “giblets” or “offal” covers a fairly wide range of edible parts of animal, fish and bird carcasses. Chicken giblets, for example, are hearts, gizzards and livers. For some reason wings, necks, feet and drumsticks are considered meat, although not as tasty and valuable as the fillet or thigh.
Traditionally these are seen as less valuable meat products compared to meat itself, which is why they are called by-products.
Giblets are an excellent ingredient for tasty dishes, sometimes even much tastier than the chicken meat itself. Giblets in soup are very good, probably because there are usually plenty of them.
Georgian cuisine has a wonderful hot appetizer, incredibly popular: kuchmachi. It is simple to make: boiled giblets, gizzards, with walnut sauce and herbs. Liver and hearts are often added. It is served in fireproof clay or even stone keci pans.
Viennese cuisine delights with an excellent dish, “Beuschel”: chicken giblets in a cream sauce with dumplings, as a ragout. And chicken Viennese-style is garnished with breaded fried giblets. From the liver you can make a delicious chicken liver salad.
To cook chicken giblets successfully you need certain skills and a few simple rules. Different offal is fried and boiled very differently, and the cooking times vary severalfold. Besides, chicken giblets are rich in blood: the heart, kidneys and liver need soaking or certain cleaning steps.
On the Apennine Peninsula, simply put, in Italy, they make wonderful dishes from chicken giblets. I have tried giblets Roman-style, a simple giblet soup, and an excellent pasta with tomato sauce and giblets. Let’s make a simple pasta sauce that suits everyone. It cooks quickly and can easily become an everyday dinner dish for anyone, especially when you are short on time.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Pasta 250 g
- Water for cooking the pasta 2.5 l
- Salt for the pasta water 7 g per 1 l of water
- Chicken giblets 250 g
- Garlic 1-2 cloves
- Hot pepper 1
- Tomatoes (the ripest) 2-3
- Olive oil 3 tbsp
- Parsley, flour, ground black pepper, salt to taste
Step-by-step recipe
To make chicken giblets with pasta, I recommend small, rounded pasta shapes. Cappelletti, pipe (elbows) or conchiglie (shells) work well. They hold the sauce nicely and go well with pieces of giblets. And of course, use good pasta, not a nameless flour mix.
For chicken giblets, it is best to take hearts and livers, because gizzards take longer and are harder to cook. Besides, hearts and livers are most often sold together. First rinse the giblets under running water, carefully removing membranes, blood clots and the bile ducts on the liver.
Salt and pepper the giblets lightly and, if needed, cut them into pieces. Let stand for 10-15 minutes to absorb the salt. Dredge the giblets in flour and fry in vegetable oil until a golden crust forms.
The giblets don’t need to be fried until fully cooked. Just fry them until the pieces are golden.
Grate the garlic over the giblets and add a whole hot pepper pod. It gives the dish a light aroma and a barely noticeable heat. Or you can halve the pod, discard the seeds and make a spicy version. It’s up to you. Fry the giblets for 6-7 minutes, stirring.
Scald the tomatoes and remove the seeds and skins. Cut the flesh into small cubes and add to the giblets. Finely chop the parsley and add it to the dish. Add 4-5 tbsp of water and simmer everything under a lid until done. This usually takes 10-12 minutes.
In a cup, stir 1-2 tsp of flour (3–7 g) into a little water and pour the mixture through a sieve into the chicken giblets, to avoid lumps. The flour makes the sauce thicker and smoother. Let the sauce with giblets simmer for a few minutes at the gentlest bubble so it doesn’t burn.
While the sauce cooks, boil the pasta. The usual routine: water, a little salt. The cooking time is on the pasta package. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander and let the water run off. Toss the giblets in sauce with the cooked pasta.
Serve the giblets with pasta hot.
Calories and macros
800 kcal
Serving ≈ 530 g
- Protein40 g21% of kcal
- Fat26 g30% of kcal
- Carbs95 g49% of kcal
100 g152 kcalProtein 7.6 gFat 4.9 gCarbs 18.1 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
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