Organ Meat Recipes?

[jyl]

So, my friend and have decided to have a dinner where the featured courses are organ meats.

Any favorite recipes or even suggestions for what meats? We define "organ" loosely, includes any offal really.

We have thought of:
- beef heart (how best to cook? sautee?)
- chicken gizzards (as finger food , or in a salad?)
- beef tongue (how to cook?)
- liver (I only know chopped or fried slices. What about some wet cooking method, braising say)
- marrow bone
- what about cartilage - joints and so on. Is there a way to make them yummy?

I'm open to all culinary suggestions.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

I recently had some ox cartilage. Cooked and shaved very thinly with a spicy Chinese vinaigrette. it was ok.

I like sweetbreads lightly poached, sliced thin, dusted in flour, quickly sauteed and then topped with a lobster cream sauce, sprinkled with fresh tarragon. Reduce a fair amount of sauterne for the sauce to give it extra richness; alternatively, you could make a beurre blanc with the sauterne and sauté a little lobster separately.

[aigel]

Stir fried liver (my hunting camp recipe) ...

2 pounds of liver (any animal will do)
1 large onion
3 tbsp of oil (animal fat preferred)
1 tbsp flower
shot of white wine or water
salt
black pepper (freshly ground)

Cut liver in very thin pieces of stir fry, about 2-3 mm thick and not larger than 2x5 cm. After cutting it up, soak in milk for 20 minutes. Then drain. Dice onions finely. Heat up heavy cast iron pan with oil until oil starts to smoke. Put in onions first for 30s-1min, then the liver. Stir fry for 2 minutes until it starts to look grey on the outside. Then dust with flower, stir, and put wine / water on it, which will make just a little bit of gravy. Add salt and pepper to taste (plenty of pepper is good here). Simmer just long enough until liver is well done (this is not so important if you have beef liver - with some of the critters I eat in the field, you want it well done).

Enjoy.

George

[aigel]

Only 2 ways to eat heart:

Same as above liver recipe, or boiled for a long time (crock pot). If you do anything in between thinly sliced/fast cooked and boiled for a long time, it will be tough as nails.

George

[vash]

marrow bones. 400 degree oven. get the marrow bones to room temp. salt and pepper them, roast until bubbly hot. serve with a great, thin hearty toast. butter of the gods. goes great with a proper martini.

chicken gizzards. clean them, cut them into same size, bite sized pieces. marinade them in buttermilk with copious amounts of your favorite hot sauce. dust with seasoned flour, and deep fry them. serve with ice cold beer.

[aigel]

Beef Tongue:

Beef tongue
1 tbsp peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 carrot
1 stick celery
salt

1/2 stick butter
8 ounces smoked ham (preferrably died ham = proscutto) cut in thin slices / pieces.
2 small onions or one large.
2 tsp tomato paste
1 tbsp flower
1/2 cup white wine

Unpack beef tongue and wash with cold water. Put in salt water to boil together with bay leaf, peppercorns, celery, carrot and one small onion (or half big onion). A pressure cooker is recommended, or put in crock pot, as this will take 3-4 hours in an unpressurized pot. Boil until tender, but not falling apart. If you overboil, it will become mush and not very appetizing. There is about a 1/2 hour boiling window where the consistency is very good.

Remove tongue from pot and let cool enough to where you can peel the outer skin off. This can be done with rubber gloves to minimize the wait. When peeled, slice in 1-1.5 cm thick slices and arrange on a large plate.

Make a creamy consistency sauce by melting the butter and lightly fyring the ham. Dice onion and add. Then mix in the flower. Slowly add the wine and stir with a whisk. Then slowly add broth from the boil until you have a creamy sauce. Add tomato paste. Simmer until onions are soft.

Finally, either pour the sauce over the sliced tongue or put the tongue in the sauce. Serve over wide egg noodle pasta with vegetable side.

Tip: If the tongue is too tough after being sliced, simmer in the sauce until it is the perfect consistency.

Enjoy!

George

[aigel]

Another good way to eat organ meat is to make Cajun Boudin. You can find recipes online for that. Basically it is 20-40% organs, including liver, kidney, heart, gizzards - you name it. Then some fatty pork meat (belly or shoulder) and rice to stretch the whole thing. Any recipe out there will be ok as long as you don't forget the parsley, green onion and red pepper!

George

[TechnoViking]

My fav is going to Whole Foods and buying a really nice Pâté for a party. Wait for squeamish folks to start chowing down on it and then see the look on their face when you tell them what it is

[jyl]

Great - what a lot of ideas, thanks!

In Taiwan I had a dish that looked like cubes of fat pork, with the fat translucent and gelatinous and only a little meat. The moment you placed a cube in your mouth, it dissolved into the most savory liquid you can imagine. Any idea how or what that was?

[jyl]

Also, do you guys ever braise a tough muscly meat like tongue or heart?

[jyl]

I just watched an Anthony Bourdain show where he visits a restaurant (Tokyo) and has chicken sashimi and fried chicken skin. I might expand the def of "organ" to include skin. Actually, skin is an organ, isn't it? I'm thinking of an appetizer of deep fried skin (chicken and salmon).

[aigel]

Originally Posted by jyl

Also, do you guys ever braise a tough muscly meat like tongue or heart?

Not fatty enough - they both would dry out. I go with our traditional family recipes and none of them call for braising or roasting of organ meat.

Geor

[aigel]

Originally Posted by jyl

Great - what a lot of ideas, thanks!

In Taiwan I had a dish that looked like cubes of fat pork, with the fat translucent and gelatinous and only a little meat. The moment you placed a cube in your mouth, it dissolved into the most savory liquid you can imagine. Any idea how or what that was?

That was a cold dish. That is gelatine that would become broth again in your mouth. I like pork feet that are boiled and then poured out in deep plates with the broth. The broth will become jello. This is eaten cold. I have found this dish in chinese cuisine too - in the restaurant it often is shank meat that is thinly sliced. It is also done with chicken and even chicken feet.

HTH?

George

[jyl]

I see. Makes sense.

My friend and I were drunk when we decided to do this, by the way.

[jyl]

Hth?

[aigel]

Next time you drink, you should go to brunch the next day at a Mexican taqueria on Saturday or Sunday and eat Menudo. That's a pile of insides, mainly cow stomach and cow feet. I like it a lot. I have a nice tripe recipe using a roux, if you would like to try cooking tripe yourself.

I keep and freeze all the organ meat that I do not eat right away from all my prey. Heart, tongue, kidney, spleen, liver, gizzards ... Turkey, pig, bear, deer, fowl ... then once a year or so, I make Liverwurst and Cajun Boudin. The Liverwurst is like a Pâté. I smoke some of it in the casing and some of it goes in mason jars. Everyone loves the stuff, until I tell them what's in it.

George

[aigel]

Hope This Helps?

[WolfeMacleod]

Haggis

[jyl]

HTH indeed!

[javadog]