what part is the chicken gizzard

What Part is the Chicken Gizzard?

If you’ve ever cooked a whole chicken, you may have seen the gizzard, a small organ in the middle that looks like an oval. But what is this strange part of the chicken, and what does it do? This article will explain everything you need to know about the chicken gizzard.

The Chicken’s Digestive System

So we can understand the gizzard, we must first know how a chicken’s stomach works. Food that a chicken eats goes down its esophagus and into a pouch called the crop. There, it stays until the chicken is ready to digest it. The food goes from the crop to the proventriculus, which is a glandular part of the stomach that lets digestive juices out.

Between the proventriculus and the intestines is the gizzard, which is the next organ on the list. The gizzard is a thick, muscular organ that breaks down food into small pieces that the body can digest. It works a lot like our teeth, breaking down food through muscle contractions. But unlike teeth, a gizzard needs help from ingesta, which are small stones and grit that a chicken eats to help it grind. When muscles work together with grit, the gizzard works well to break down food.

What Does the Gizzard Look Like?

The gizzard is a round or oval organ, typically 2 to 4 inches long in an adult chicken. It has thick, muscular walls made up of inner circular and outer longitudinal layers of smooth muscle. The inner lining of the gizzard is keratinized for abrasion resistance, protecting it from damage by food particles and grit. On the outside, the gizzard is surrounded by a tough membrane called the tunica externa.

When you cut open a gizzard, the inner surface has a rough, sandpaper-like texture designed to help grind up the ingested food and rocks. You’ll also often find rocks, grit, seeds and other hard food items inside the gizzard if you open it up. The powerful muscles allow the gizzard to exert up to 30 pounds per square inch on food contents!

Unique Features of the Gizzard

Here are some key features that allow the gizzard to carry out its critical function in the chicken digestive system:

• Powerful muscles and thick walls – Allows the organ to contract vigorously and crush food.

• Grit and stones – These abrasive materials are ingested by the chicken and help grind the food.

• Rough inner lining – Protects the gizzard wall from damage during food grinding.

• Capable of reversing peristalsis—The gizzard can move its contents both ways to grind food well.

• Storage capacity – It can hold and continue grinding food when emptying is slowed.

The gizzard’s ability to pulverize food through strong contractions and with the help of grit makes it a unique organ specialized for mechanical digestion.

Gizzard Function and Importance

The gizzard plays a vital role in chicken health and digestion:

• It grinds food into small particles to increase exposure to digestive enzymes.

• The mechanical breakdown makes nutrients more accessible for absorption.

• It pushes food back into the proventriculus to be mixed with digestive juices.

• The gizzard regulates food passage from crop to intestine.

• It provides grit needed by chickens to digest their food properly.

Without the gizzard, chickens would be unable to get adequate nutrition from their food. Chickens that have an impaired or damaged gizzard can suffer from malnutrition, gut impaction and other serious health issues.

Evolutionary Benefits

The gizzard provides an efficient way for chickens to grind food without chewing or teeth. This offers evolutionary advantages:

• Grinding action not reliant on a specialized mouth or teeth.

• Allows for a beak optimized for pecking and clawing.

• Permits a lighter-weight skull compared to toothed birds.

• Enables flexibility in diet from seeds/grains to small prey.

Overall, the muscular gizzard permits birds to occupy diverse ecological niches as it facilitates digestion of a wide range of food items.

Culinary Uses

While you won’t find chicken gizzards on most American dinner plates, they are part of food cultures across the globe. Here are some ways gizzards are consumed:

• In Haitian and Southeast Asian cuisine, they are fried or grilled and sold as street food.

• They are used in Mexican soups and stews for flavor and texture.

• West African dishes feature boiled, fried or spiced gizzards.

• German gizzard recipes include sausages and cold salads.

• Italians cook gizzards in a tomato sauce or enjoy them pickled.

From traditional recipes to modern delicacies, the humble chicken gizzard finds its way into many global food traditions.