
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.
Place in full pot of water with salt and pepper. Add other ingredients to the pot and cover. Cook over medium heat until tender about 2 1/2 or 3 hours. Serve with vinegar or hot sauce. (Serves 4-6)
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, macaroni 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.
Place cleaned sections in a pot of cold water as you continue to remove and discard. Pour the chitterlings into the sink, fill the sink with water and clean each piece, carefully and thoroughly.
Double check to make sure there is no debris clinging to any piece. Rinse in fresh water several times. Cut the chitterlings into pieces about 2 inches long. Transfer to pot for cooking. CLEANING HOG MAWS. Thaw maws if frozen. Under running water, remove the fat and debris from maws.
Cut maws into 2 inch pieces. Rinse in fresh water several times. Place chitterlings and maws in large pot. Add garlic, onion, bay leaf, salt, vinegar, potato and red pepper. Bring pot to a boil. Reduce heat. Cover and simmer 4-5 hours or until chitterlings are tender. Stir occasionally. Remove and discard the bay leaf. Using a fork or spoon, mash the potato against the side of the pot. Stir to distribute the mashed potato. Serve hot
Bake in 300ºF. oven, removing water as it builds up, but leaving enough for simmering. Once the chitlins begin to get tender (may have to increase heat), drain off excess water, adjust seasoning by using salt, a little more vinegar (if desired) and/or black pepper and hot sauce. Continue to cook until desired tenderness is achieved. Delicious served with greens, coleslaw and sweet potatoes
It served to grease the pot in anticipation of the more ordinary fat to come later on.Next stop for the intestines was the gut hole. A hole was dug in the ground (always away from the main hustle and bustle of the hogkilling) about 5 or 6 feet long, a couple of feet wide and a couple of feet deep. Boards or a sheet of plywood were secured along one side of the gut hole. This served the very obvious purpose of keeping the manure off the workers. (There wasn't as much manure as you might think because the hogs were taken off feed a couple of days beforehand.)
Large quantities of water was poured into and through the intestines to wash them out. In fact they went through more than a dozen washings. Eventually, the intestines were turned inside out with the aid of a reed. You turned the end of the intestine in on itself for a few inches. Then you inserted the reed and gently pulled the intestine back over the reed. Then you scrubbed the intestine with salt. And rinsed several more times. To quote one of the ladies who used to do this - "You washed them until they didn't feel slimy anymore".Now that the chitlings are clean, what do you do with them?
Well some are used as casings for making sausage. But most are cooked. The chitlings are tied up in a cloth feed bag (clean of course) and boiled for a few hours until they are tender. You can eat them right out of the pot, but most of them are frozen for later use. When they are eaten at a later time, you usually fry them over in a frying pan. They taste great! If you're wondering why the chitlings were put in a bag to cook, here's your answer. The purpose of the feed bag was to keep the chitlings seperate from the other stuff that was being boiled in the pot.
At the same time and in the same pot, you're boiling pigs' feet, snouts, a few ears, and usually a whole hogs head or two. These, when the meat boiled off the bone and was seasoned with salt, pepper, and vinegar made what we called souse. (I think grocery stores call it headcheese.) It tastes real good when soaked in vinegar and eaten with a soda cracker







