Recent food movements to make use of all parts of an animal and eat "snout to tail" have brought offal back into forefront of cooking. Even so, unless you grew up with it or are a particularly adventurous eater, offal still might not seem very...appealing...to you. Where do you stand?
Offal is the broad term for the organ meats and other parts of the animal leftover after butchering. The most common kinds of offal are the liver, heart, kidneys, sweet breads (thymus and pancreas glands), tripe (stomach lining), brain, lungs, tongue, and intestines. Almost all of these can be easily found at a good butcher, and we're also seeing the more popular kinds more frequently at larger commercial supermarkets.
Offal is high in protein and many other essential nutrients, and dishes made with offal have often played a big nutritional role in parts of the world where other forms of protein are rare. On the other hand, many types of offal are also pretty high in cholesterol, so some moderation is required!
Offal can be cooked whole, as in dishes like tripe soup, fried sweet breads, and steak and kidney pie. Organ meats are also often used in terrines and pâtés for the richness and texture they add to the mix. We've also had salami made with tongue - not too bad, really!
Prepared poorly, offal can still be pretty darn awful (pun intended). So if offal is new to you and you're curious to give it a try, we'd suggest finding a good friend who knows how to cook with it. Second to this, try a few offal dishes at a good restaurant so you know how it should look, taste, and feel when you make it at home.
What kinds of offal and dishes would you recommend trying?
Related: Chicken Giblets: An Illustrated Guide
(Image: Flickr member Gee licensed under Creative Commons)
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Chinese food, the kind that's not on the English menu, includes a lot of offal. As a result, I've eaten parts of animals most people don't even want to think about. It's usually braised with heavy flavours (garlic, spices, etc), though the dishes are equally about the texture. Weird squishy, rubbery or toothy things are actually appreciated in Chinese cuisine.
Yeah, I can't get past it. I'd like to be able to, but fried chicken livers are about as much offal as I can handle.
the only offal I have eaten and loved is liver (calf,chicken) Tripe (menudo), and Beef Tongue and all are delicious, if cooked correctly of course! I have alwas wanted to try sweet breads, brains, heart (besides the occasional chicken heart).
Recently, my neighbors had pork liver that even my dog wouldn't eat :)
Can someone give me a pronunciation tip so that I don't look like a fool if this topic ever comes up in conversation? OH-fall or AW-fal? Thanks!
The deal is...
It's offally good!
I'm not against tasting any offal, but I wouldn't try to prepare it myself.
One of the best, greasiest meals is going to a mexican carniceria and buying carnitas (fried pork), tripa (cow intestines) and buche (pig stomach) by the pound. Make some refried beans and corn tortillas and be prepared for the heart attack.
I don't eat brain though - I dunno, but I feel like I'm insulting the animal eating its brain. So no sesos for me.
@sunshinedaydream-- its pronounced like "awful". not kidding.
Mmm, offal! I've eaten quite a bit: liver, tongue, intestines, tripe, sweet breads. I'll most things at least once, although I'm not sure if I'd eat brain. I've grown up trying everything (my parents are both immigrants and adventurous eaters), and I know that my ability to eat almost anything is not that common.
One of my favorite things to eat are those stews you can get in Korean restaurants with the intestines, tripe and vegetables in spicy broth. Delicious, if it doesn't freak you out.
Some parts I like, some I don't - it's as simple as that really. I happen to love liver and tongue (veal, pork or lamb). Can't stand the texture of brains.
But it is quite interesting to think that many of the cuts we find normal these days are actually the least tasty and have the least amount of benefits to us (vitamins, minerals).
Our attitudes as well, we project all kinds of emotions into this whole offal/awful discussion. Personally I would be quite offended if 90% of me was considered unfit for humans but perfectly fine as pet food.
Food for thought..
@chusmabilly -- I feel the same way about brains. It seems weird and zombie-ish to me. Same thing about the heart.
I'm all for eating more of the animal that's butchered, and that includes offal. My mom loves it, so I grew up with a house that prepared giblet gravy and chicken livers every once in a while. I'm not a huge fan of chicken liver, but I love tongue and sweetbreads.
I grew up eating liver, heart, kidneys. Heart was always my favourite. I've tried tripe a couple times and find I don't really like the rubber-band-like texture. Tongue tasted ok, but I found the texture unpleasant. I've had tendon at dim sum a couple times and once it was just like a nice beefy jelly, the other it was hard and rubbery and not very nice. I recently tried and enjoyed sweet breads (thymus and pancreas glands). So I guess I've tried most of it and some of it I like, some of it I don't. Mostly the ones I dislike have to do with the texture rather than squickiness at where it comes from.
I have been trying to get more into the offal eating. Organs have a lot of really great vitamins and such, and they are ususally inexpensive. Anyone have a good calf liver recipe? Besides being breaded and fried though...
I like menudo, but I will never eat intestines or anything from the CNS. Sorry but prions are not my idea of a good meal. Too scary.
I don't think I could make myself eat it. I know it's not rational, but my head goes "UGH, you want to eat WHAT?"
i love making chicken liver pate! it goes really with toasted bread. I can have few slices of bread with pate, wine, and some fruits and call it a great dinner!
I'm not generally a super cautious person, and maybe I was too frightened by the mad cow thing, but I don't eat organ meats anymore, not even chicken livers. You never know what these critters have been fed, and organs filter leftovers (hormones, antibiotics) from the animals' systems. I'm reluctant to eat the muscle meat. Organs are definitely off my list.
Tongue, heart, liver (only poultry, beef & pork has that smell cooking that kills my appetite) I like. Kidneys are okay but not a huge fan. Intestine is what natural sausage casing is made of so as long as it wraps wonderful spicy meat I like it.
Tribe though, I can't stand the stuff. My grandmother loves tripe and I just don't get the appeal. The taste just can't make up for that awful texture. Brain I won't touch, obviously beef brain has the risk of mad cow but prion diseases are not limited to cows so I just leave the stuff alone.
Tongue (a perfectly grilled, marinated beef tongue is soooo good), liver (all kinds...have you had monkfish liver? Mmm.) heart (a childhood snack was grilled chicken hearts on a skewer...I like the crunchy texture. Tripe is ok. Chinese restaurants serve marinated offal dishes sometimes at dim sum, and on the rare occasion, they will include beef lung, and it's by far my favorite! The flavor is so concentrated there in the slightly spongy texture, it tastes like a whole cow.
Brain and blood though, I don't touch.
My father used to cook brains (calves or lambs I guess although I never asked him) once in a while. I came home from school one day and smelled them cooking, didn't like it at ALL, went into the kitchen, lifted the lid and there was a little brain. Ugh. And with the consequences of Mad Cow I just have never wanted to eat brains.
But I eat the rest of this stuff if it's well prepared. My brother & I tried cooking tripe once and it wasn't good, but I had it later at a cafe on the Cheyenne Indian reservation in Montana and it was delicious, stewed with pork and hominy. Preparation has a lot to do with it.
Chicken livers, food for gods!
My mother used to make the most divine tongue stew. She cooked it for hours with tomato, carrots and potato and the meat would be melt in your mouth delicious. She doesn't make it anymore though. She said that with the influx of immigrants (who know how to cook tongue), tongue is no longer as cheap as it used to be, and if it's not cheap, it's not worth all that work.
Chicken feet roasted to a crisp. Although, I will only eat the feet of pasture-raised chickens. I'm lucky: I live in San Francisco and I have a source for the feet of chickens that have been pasture-raised.