So I have been fiddling around with offal recipes lately and I have had some mild successes and some mild failures. In all recipes I trimmed and washed the offal as preperation.
Lambs Heart.
Marinade in red wine, garlic, pepper. Slice potatoes and put in oven pot, cover in the marinade and heart, cover in a can of diced tomatoes and herbs (I used a can-parma mix). Sprinkle in bran or breadcrumbs and bits of butter. Cook until potatoes are soft.
This one was delicious, and for the first time I ate the tricky to cut meat I was surprised how fleshy the meat was. It was not stringy, or soft like organs, it was like a good old cut of beef.
Chicken liver.
Fry onions in butter, garlic, peanuts, add the liver, fry until brown. Add peanut butter, cinnamon, chilli, brown sugar and a tad balsamic vinegar. Thicken and served with rice.
This one was tasty, but after about half a plate it became too much. I quickly decided chicken liver is good but only in small doses. The after-taste and subsequent burps became incredibly livery and the texture began to freak me out… there was nothing to chew!
Beef heart.
Marinade in white wine, garlic, rosemary, parsley, and bbq as a steak.
This was delicious!!! Really lean cut and easy to prepare. I need a better knife for trimming, I could have saved a lot of meat if I cut closer to the arteries and the heart insides.
My wife and I are going in with two other families to buy an entire cow in a few weeks. We’ll have more tongue, heart and liver than we know what to do with. I’ve never cooked organ meats before, but I guess it’s time to learn how to.
The heart is one of the easiest. You will probably cut too much off the first time you do it, but you will learn to keep 90% of the meat once you work out what is what. Pull the arteries out, cut off the valves, and skin the inside of the chambers and you are done!
Liver is even easier, you can just boil it and it falls to peices of its own accord. I eat everything, even the little bulby things on the side.
28% protein
4.7% fat
Low in sodium
No sugar
Very high in iron
High in niacin
High in phosphorus
Very high in riboflavin
Very high in selenium
Very high in vitamin B12
High in zinc
And for those who are sick of chewing through crappy grained meat, Heart DOES NOT HAVE A GRAIN!
One of the leanest, highest protein, cheapest bang for your buck meats on the market and no one buys it!
I highly recommend everyone starts eating the hearts of their enemies, or at least eating the hearts of their cows…
Thanks for these recipes and suggestions. Beef prices have gotten out of my budget range lately so I’ve been eating a lot more ground turkey; but I’ll have to look into the beef hearts. My Mom used to make a stroganoff dish with beef hearts as a kid and I really liked it…but I also liked liver and tongue as well.