The mere thought of cooking and eating organ meats causes a visceral (pun intended) reaction in many people, including my sister. “EEEEUW, innards!” You may have been served a leathery piece of liver by your mother as a child. Or you may have had a traumatic experience dissecting a frog in high school. [I could rant about how kids never have fun in high school biology labs these days, but that’s a subject for another post.] However, I’d like to point out the advantages of cooking and eating organ meats. (Terry, curb your gag reflex for a few minutes.)
- They’re economical. A pound of chicken livers costs much less than a pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Chicken gizzards cost even less per pound than chicken livers.
- They’re nutritious. Organ meats are an excellent source of protein. Liver contains more iron than muscle meats. The iron in all meat products is more absorbable than from plant sources, so an occasional meal containing liver will be advantageous to iron stores in children and premenopausal women where iron-deficiency is common.
- They’re sustainable. (Hey, a term to which millennials can relate.) Our thrifty forebears used every part of the hog or steer they slaughtered. By eating organ meats, you’re assuring that more of the animal is being used. Chances are that you may be eating organ meats without realizing it. Take a look at the ingredient label on sausages, hot dogs, or cold cuts sometime. Pâté is just a fancy French term for chopped liver, often mixed with other meats.
- They can be quite tasty when prepared properly. Several friends anxiously await Passover and Rosh Hashanah, as that’s about the only time of the year that Whole Foods carries chopped liver. I didn’t like beef/calf liver until a former roommate made it with a tomato sauce and didn’t cook it to shoe-leather stage. Her adage was that tomatoes or egg can make anything palatable.
So what to do with these organ meats? I’m concentrating on giblets (chicken livers and gizzards) and liver, since they’re the most readily available in supermarkets. My standard prep for chicken gizzards and hearts is dirty rice. The other night I made stir-fried chicken gizzards from a recipe in Nicole Routhier’s book, The Foods of Vietnam. I should have used the food processor to cut up the gizzards into manageable pieces. Julian makes a mean pasta with chicken livers. In the 1980’s, calf’s liver with a pan sauce of red wine vinegar was a standard prep. I’ve made it several times. And there’s always old-school liver and onions; however, I advise cooking the liver briefly so it stays tender.
My experience with other organ meats is limited. We did try sweetbreads once in a foods lab. (A classmate actually discarded the package, thinking it was trimmings.) I tried chitlins (or chitterlings, alias hog intestine) once at a Black History Month event at the Dallas VA Medical Center. My preceptor at the VA had pulled an all-nighter to clean and prep them, so I felt obliged to give them a try. If you venture into Hispanic or Asian groceries, you may see kidneys, blood, or other organ meats. (Q: How do they keep the blood from coagulating? A: Probably the same way that hospital labs do for some blood samples, a whopping dose of citric acid.) Blood cake, clotted blood, is sometimes used in Vietnamese cuisine. The one organ meat I do not plan to consume is brain. The mad cow disease episode that occurred 15 years ago hereabouts dissuaded me from ever eating it, along with gross-out scenes from horror movies.
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