#gizdodo

Today, my post is about a part of chicken called ‘gizzard’. I used chicken gizzard to prepare a mouth watery dish popularly known as ‘Gizdodo’ in Nigeria. The name gizdodo is coined from gizzard and dodo (a native name for fried plantain in Nigeria).

I decided to visit my favorite grocery shop Al-Premium Food mart in Scarborough, where I usually buy fresh Halal proteins. I am just 6 months old here in Toronto, so I am yet to find the local markets. I bought a pack of chicken gizzard for my recipe.

I choose to use chicken gizzard because it is one of my favorite parts of chicken. I like the fact that it is a muscular part which makes it firm to bite and crunchy. I also like to use gizzard to prepare a spicy tomato-based sauce, best paired with a glass of red wine.

The history of the first chicken ‘Red jungle fowl (Gallus-Gallus) dates to 2000-B.C and their ancestry can be traced back to Southeast Asia, The red jungle fowls were skittish; they were found mostly hiding in trees to eat insects and whatever they could eat. At that time, chicken was not seen as food. After centuries of selection and breeding of numerous chickens, chickens now exist in many colors, shapes, and sizes.

In the anatomy of chicken, there are different parts or cuts, Gizzard is one of the parts of the chicken. The gizzard is basically known as the stomach of a chicken, it is the muscular part of the stomach. Gizzard is the reason chicken and birds in general do not require teeth, It is referred to as the Hen’s teeth. It is a muscular part of the Chicken stomach; it helps to grind grains and fiber into smaller digestible particles.

I bought a pack of gizzards which weighed 85 grams for $6.71 from the grocery shop and it costs between $25 to $30 on most menus I have seen.

For this recipe, I used moist heat cooking method (boiling) and dry heat cooking method (deep frying). I used the boiling method because I wanted the gizzard to absorb the seasoning and to soften the gizzards. I used the deep-frying method just make the gizzard crunchy.

Below is a detailed recipe and method of my tasty gizdodo.