Gizzards come from a bird’s digestive tract. They are a thick, muscular stomach organ that grinds food in place of teeth. The gizzards you find at the grocery store or butcher shop are almost always from chickens or turkeys, removed during processing along with the other internal organs. They’re one of several edible organs, collectively called giblets, that are often packed inside a whole bird or sold separately.
What a Gizzard Actually Is
Birds don’t have teeth, so they can’t chew. Instead, they swallow food whole, and it passes through two stomachs. The first stomach is glandular and adds digestive enzymes. The second stomach is the gizzard: a compact, powerful muscle that physically crushes and grinds food into smaller pieces. It sits to the left of the bird’s midline, just behind the breastbone.
The gizzard is made of two thick muscles that contract against each other with remarkable force. In some species, the grinding pressure can exceed 585 kilograms per square centimeter. To boost that grinding power, many birds swallow small, sharp pebbles and grit, which sit inside the gizzard and act like built-in teeth. These stones grind against the food and against each other until they become smooth and useless, at which point the bird vomits them out and swallows fresh, jagged ones. In ostriches, these stones can make up between one-fifth and one-half of the stomach contents.
The interior of the gizzard is lined with a tough, protective coating called koilin, a yellowish, rubbery layer that shields the muscle from being damaged by all that grinding. This lining is the part you peel away when cleaning gizzards for cooking.
Birds Aren’t the Only Animals With Gizzards
Chickens and turkeys get most of the attention, but gizzards appear across a surprising range of species. Crocodilians have them. So do many fish, including mullet, gizzard shad, suckers, angelfishes, and surgeonfishes. The organ evolved independently in different animal groups as a solution to the same problem: breaking down tough food without teeth (or with inadequate ones). Even some dinosaurs are thought to have used gizzard stones, based on smooth, polished pebbles found near fossil skeletons.
How Gizzards Are Harvested
During poultry processing, the entire package of internal organs is removed from the bird in one piece. Workers then separate the individual organs: intestines, liver, heart, lungs, and gizzard. The gizzard requires extra preparation because it’s part of the digestive system and contains whatever the bird last ate, plus grit and other indigestible material.
To clean a gizzard, it’s cut open and the contents are emptied. Then the yellow inner lining (the koilin layer) is peeled away from the surrounding muscle. This membrane has a rubbery texture and separates fairly easily from the edible flesh, sometimes with a small starter cut at the edge. If you buy gizzards from a grocery store, this cleaning has usually already been done. If you’re processing a whole bird yourself, it’s an essential step.
Nutritional Profile
Gizzards are one of the most protein-dense cuts of poultry. A 100-gram serving of cooked chicken gizzard delivers about 30 grams of protein, 3 milligrams of iron (40% of the daily value), and 4 milligrams of zinc (also 40% of the daily value). They’re low in fat compared to most cuts of chicken.
The tradeoff is cholesterol. That same 100-gram serving contains roughly 370 milligrams, well over the amount in a typical serving of chicken breast or thigh. Gizzards are also classified as organ meat, which puts them in the high-purine category alongside liver and other offal. People managing gout or high uric acid levels generally limit organ meats for this reason.
How Gizzards Are Cooked Around the World
Gizzards are dense muscle, so they need either long, slow cooking to become tender or very high heat for a crispy exterior with a firm, chewy bite. The texture is unlike any other cut of poultry: compact, with a satisfying chew that holds up well in stews and braises.
In the American South, gizzards are breaded and deep-fried, often served alongside fried chicken livers. Korean cooking stir-fries them with vegetables and chili paste in a dish called dak jong jib bokkeum. West African cuisines stew them in rich, spiced tomato sauces. In Japan, grilled gizzards (sunagimo) are a common skewer option at yakitori restaurants, prized for their clean, slightly crunchy texture. Dominican-style mollejas guisadas braises them until tender in a savory sauce.
If you’re cooking gizzards for the first time, simmering them in salted water for one to two hours before finishing them in a pan or fryer is the most forgiving approach. This pre-cooking breaks down the dense muscle fibers and prevents the final dish from being unpleasantly tough.