Put aside your fava beans and chianti for a moment and let’s talk internal organs of the non-human kind.
When I was a young pup, I visited London and decided to go native. I popped into a corner pub, ordered a popular dish, and soon sank my teeth into a fresh steak and kidney pie.
If there is a hell on Earth, brother, it resided on that steaming, fetid fork of muffled moo. The heaviness of fresh-baked kidneys–for brunch, no less–defies civiized words.
Epilogue: Trying not to be too provincial, I ate three-quarters of the pie, then ran screaming into the daylight. Never, ever again.
I grew up in the South, and fried chicken livers and gizzards were a favorite of mine. Still are, in fact.
My grandmother was very old South and she regularly cooked up chitterlings (pronounced CHIT-lins). I did not like these, too strong a taste for me. But you could always tell when Grandma was cooking chitterlings…it smelled up the whole block, no freaking lie!
I like sweetbreads, and deer liver and heart are a must-have on a hunting trip. Tripe is good in menudo.
Intestines though. Man, those are bad. My mom’s from Argentina, and had fond memories of some unpronounceable intestine dish, in which they are braided and cooked on the grill. My dad gamely cooked them, holding his nose (he doesn’t even like liver.)
Horrible, horrible stuff, which my mom gleefully ate, so I can only assume that they were cooked correctly and not pulled directly from the south end of a northbound dog. Which is what they tasted like.
I love chicken livers too, and chicken hearts. An aunt used to fix gizzards so they were really tender, but I haven’t been able to manage that.
Beef heart and tongue are quite edible, and calve’s liver is good if it’s sliced thin, fried quickly (you can’t overcook it or it tastes terrible), and smothered in bacon and onions.
Whenever my father made gumbo he’d throw the chicken heart in because he knew how much I loved it. I like the liver, but not nearly as much as I like the heart, and I never cared for gizzards. I get my chicken heart fix every now and then when I make chicken soup.
My mother makes the most delicious higado encebollado (liver and onions, Puerto Rican style) ever.
Don’t feel bad, Freud tried the same thing for years…
Seriously, though, you usually have to parboil the brains then chill them so that they don’t fall apart into gelatinous mush. Same with sweetbreads, which have to be blanched and then trimmed, otherwise you’re chewing on the nasty connective tissue which is all gristly.
Living in South America, they find all kinds of uses for all parts of the animal. Anticuchos, or skewered hearts are popular, usually made with pieces of beef heart but also popular with chicken. At the supermarket, they have big tubs of chicken hearts, liver and gizzards next to the more common drumsticks and breasts, then down the way in the land of oink and moo they’re big on tripe and intestines which are braided as ** Cowgirl Jules ** describes above, grilled and referred to as chuchulines. I can get fresh sweetbreads, beef and veal heart diced up, and. for some reason, lungs, which are scary heavy blocks of frozen cow stuff next to the hamburgers.
And this is just at the local supermarket, not even a speciality butcher. They also sell poor skinned rabbits and little guinea pigs, which freak out the Europeans and the tourists.
I love chicken livers and used to love calves’ liver, but nowadays it tastes a bit too strong to me.
I recently posted how I once bought some lamb kidneys to try for my dinner, but they smelled nastily like piss when they were cooking. I was grossed out and decided to give them to the dogs for their dinner instead. When I sliced the cooked kidneys up, they looked so pink and juicy and appetizing that I took a bite, and they were good! Kind of like a good quality liver, only a little firmer. The dogs still got the most of them, though. I couldn’t get around that smell.
Huh - no secret. Just simmer them for a very long time like my mom used to do when making turkey stock (using necks, gizzards, hearts and vegetables). They get very soft and tender and, at least at my house, very few make it into the stuffing as was originally intended.
Haggis - lovely.
Steak and kidney - used to like it, but have gone off it ever since I dissected a kidney at school. Smells of piss.
Tongue - my mother used to make my school sandwiches out of this. Won’t touch it now.
Proper sausages - made using intestine as the ‘skin’. Lovely.
Fromage de tête - (apparently pig’s face in aspic) not nice.
Calf’s liver - never ever liked it.
Chicken gizzard - had it in Japan as yakatori - not bad.
Pig’s stomach - bleaurgh.
Pâté - chicken or pork (liver) - lovely.
Duck’s feet - not nice.
Duck’s intestine - revolting.
Foie gras - astonishingly good.
On the gizzard front, sometimes the French make a confit out of trimmed chicken gizzards. As they’re poached in duck or chicken fat for hours, they wind up becoming very rich, very tender and seasoned. Tender enough to spread on bread, in fact.
I’ll jump on the liver and kidney bandwagon, especially if the liver is in a mousse or pate and the kidneys are devilled.
Testicles (Rocky Mountain oysters, prairie oysters, fries, swingin’ steaks) of various stripes can be good as well – the annual Testicle Festival in Whitefish, MT draws huge crowds each year, and I had really nice turkey fries at a stockmen’s cafe outside of Oklahoma City last year.
“Try it!” said my friend’s mother. (We were in grad school at the time)
“What is it?” we asked, suspicious. We each had a largish scallop shell before us, each with a dollop of mousse-like pinkisdh stuff.
“I’m not going to say. Try it first.”
It was light and frothy and very salty and somewhat fishy. Salmon mousse? Shrimp pudding?
“Ok,” we said, after trying it. “What is it?”
“Brains”
The seashells were a ruse and a distraction. I don’t like brains – I discovered this before the revelation, when I tasted it. But I like being tricked into eating brains even less.
You wouldn’t pull this today. Calves brains are great places for prions.
My favorite organ was deer heart. My stepfather loved it too, which is where I got the taste for it. Neighbors would often save the heart to give to us, since they did not want to eat it. Lightly floured, and pan fried…heaven.
Unfortunately, deer with chronic wasting disease (or something like that) have been found in South Dakota (where my brother hunts), so the Game, Fish, and Parks dept. have put out a warning against eating organs from whitetail deer. Damn shame, as my brother and his wife filled at least 3, if not 4, deer tags last season.
Oh, one other item I enjoy is pickled turkey gizzards. They’re…hard to describe.
