Bad or good, share your experiences eating internal organs. (No Hannibal Lechters)

Cafe Society
21

Most of them are not worth it. In that the organ meat of the animal is rarely any better than the main muscle meat. Of course if you are in to hunting and getting the most food from your kill then they have value. But as someone who lives a more urban lifestyle I prefer those parts of the animal to be used for dog food and fast food.
That said, some are worthy in their own right

Goose Live (Foi Gras) fantastic, rich and mildly meaty substance.
Duck Liver, like goose liver.
Beef Liver, very strong, not to my personal liking, but has a flavour that you won’t find elsewhere.
Pork Liver, strong, used frequently in Pate. Not to my taste as I prefer the milder but equally ritch goose and duck liver based pates.
Suet (the fat arround a Cow or Sheeps kidneys) a wonderfull and tasteless fat, makes some of the best pastry types.
Marrowbone, rich and soft texture, like good pate without the ‘liveryness’ of pork liver based pate flavours.
Tongue, in most mamals this is one of the largest muscles, and completely boneless, makes for excellent eating.
Skin, OK not an internal organ, but often overlooked becuse of the large fat deposits under almost all animals skin, still when cooked hard to reduce the fat it can be excellent. Chinese style crispy duck skin is truely fantastic eating.

A few others have uses due to their consistancy and lack of flavour that makes them worthwhile, but they aren’t favoured for their flavour. Such as stomach cawl, and natural sausage skins.

22

As Teela said, boil them slow and low(heat). Gizzards, livers and chicken backs are excellent for seasoning white or yellow rice.

23

There will be no organ meats for this dude. I used to enjoy liver and onions, and they actually make it quite well in the cafeteria where I work, but I can’t have it anymore.

Why?

Gout.

A few minutes of tasty indulgence ain’t worth hours of swollen-toed agony.

Damn.

24

I’m very fond of beef hearts. Extremely lean meat, excellent for stews, and stir-frys. Alas some people seem to have been listening to me about how good this meat is. It used to be I could get it at the local supermarket for $0.99 a pound. Now they’re saying it’s $2.79 a pound.

I’m also a fan of liverwurst, and pate. I haven’t had foie gras, but I suspect I’d like it.

Other than that, I’m not much for organs.

25

A Wurlitzer on toast is pretty nice, if somewhat woody.
What?
I have never liked any organ meats that I’ve tried. I’m so glad my wife doesn’t like liver and onions, either. I’m not the world’s least adventuresome eater, but there are some things I have no desire to taste. Organs and brains and feet and stuff are all on the list.

26

Marrow: Yum! Beef butter!!!
Sweetbreads: Too damn rich.
Kidney: Too rich and also a hint of ammonia. Ick
Tripe: Glad I tried it, no need to try it again.
Liver: Ranges from wonderful to horrible, depending on the animal and the preparation. Mostly not for me.
Tongue: Good eating!
Heart: See Tongue.
Crab Gills: A big mistake.
Skin: The largest organ. Can be the tastiest, if prepared correctly.
Spleen: Can be nice on a crostini. Or not.
Gall bladder: No no no no no no no no!

27

Why, in the name of Og’s sweet dandruff, would anyone want to consume the organ where bile is made?

28

We were visiting one of my girlfriend’s old elementary-school classmates last year. The woman’s husband was going on and on about his hunting skills–a topic that I found rather boring. He must have sensed my disinterest, and I think it pissed him off a bit…he went into the kitchen and pulled an elk heart and liver out of the fridge.
“Hey, do you like venison?” Well, actually I do, but hate liver, and I told him so.
“Oh, you’ve got to try the heart!” I wasn’t interested in eating elk heart either, but he seemed to be issuing a challenge.
So, he fried it up right there and put a slice on a plate for me. I took a bite just to prove my manhood, or whatever. I didn’t like the taste, and left the rest. Perhaps he took my reluctance to eat the heart as an insult to his cooking, or maybe he thought I was a wuss, but he didn’t say 2 words to me the rest of the evening.

29

Trout livers are yummy but must have the gall bladder removed.

BTW, Carnac: It’s Lector. Hannibal Lector.

He went to my medical school!

So did Julius Hibbert.

:smiley:

30

Quadgop will jump on me if I’m wrong, but I believe the Gall blader only stores the bile which is actually produced in the liver. Still seems a awful thing to eat. Is it crunchy if the animal had gall stones I wonder.

31

I tried steak-and-kidney pie once at a British-themed pub-and-restaurant in the Tampa Bay area. The steak wasn’t bad but the kidneys were like liver to the 10th power. I was still tasting it, and not in a good way, the next day.

32

Blaurgh. Just reading this thread has made me a tiny bit queasy. Organ meats are nearly enough to make me go vegetarian if I think about them too much.

That said, as a young cub I picked up a taste for braunschweiger from my grandpa, and braunschweiger is liver of some sort. Chicken? Pork? I don’t even know, and that’s fine. Less I think about it, the better it tastes on white bread with Miracle Whip. :smiley:

Once upon a time, though, I did have a vegetarian roommate whose father gave her a tin of Pork Brains as a gag gift. The can wound up as part of the apartment decor as a lovely conversation piece. Most interesting about it was the nutritional info, which informed any brave enough to read it that a single serving of this delicacy offered a whopping 1,170% of your recommended daily intake of cholesterol. Sensing that the natural reaction to this particular datum would be the thought that this isn’t -quite- enough to clog your arteries in a single sitting, the can also offered a recipe for Scrambled Eggs and Brains.

Here’s one vote for leaving brains to the zombies…

33

How bout a Hammond B3 on toast? :wink:

34

Damn you. I love braunschweiger, but I can’t eat it.

Believe it or not, I used to eat it on cinnamon toast with Miracle Whip.

But I can’t do that anymore.

Crap.

:frowning:

35

Egads, Rysdad, you’d probably have loved my favorite “gross” sammich: liverwurst between two brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts.

36

How 'bout a Hammond Rye?

37

I used to eat chicken livers and gizzards until I got sick once after eating them. Now I can’t eat any type of liver. I can’t use the gravy from where it’s been cooked either- I’ll gag instantly.
THE TRAGEDY OF FIRST THURSDAY

My last late encounter with the organ meat was in Americus, Georgia. Growing up in ultra rural Alabama to a Depression era rural born mother I ate a lot of food that you can’t find in most restaurants including fried fatback. For those who’ve never tried it, it tastes like a cross between bacon, ham and chicken (though only about half of it is edible). I was very surprised when I moved to Georgia and found some mom’n’pop style places serve this.

I must confess also to a weakness for “all you can eat” Criscoteria style places- I LOVE country cookin’. In Americus I went to the local Ramada Inn a lot because their buffet had fantastic fried pork chops and veggies, but one day they had fried fatback instead (and of course fried chicken). Well, okay, that’s pork chop-ish I suppose, so I put some on my plate, noticing they looked a lot different than usual. At the table I ate a piece- it was very very chewy and didn’t taste right. I asked the waitress “How’s this fatback cooked?” and she said “Oh, I say thee sir, tis not fatback, for fatback doth not grace our buffet but for on Wednesdays, and the odd ones at that” (though those may not have been her exact words).

“Well, what may this be good woman?”

“Why, t’day milord, this be the First Thursday, when as always upon our lunch we do served fried and sliced the intestines of hogs, or as they are more perfectly known, the chitterlings, or in common parlance, chitlins.”

I had grown to be the same age as Jesus was crucified at without ever having actually eaten chitlins. It was a source of pride: I knew people who ate everything from chitlins to possum to blackbirds, but our family was above that branch of the Bible Belt bottomfeeders, but now I had tried chitlins, the forbidden meat. I felt like Thyestes when he learned he had consumed the flesh of his own children, but worse, because Thyestes just ate some Greek kids who probably were stuffed in grape leaves and sprinkled with olive oil, BUT I’D EATEN FRIGGIN’ CHITLINS!!!

And the worst part was… they weren’t bad. None of that horrid blood taste of livers and gizzards.

So… I ate the forbidden chitlin and left their naked in fig leaves, but… at least they weren’t “purist chitlins” (and if you don’t know what that means, be glad).

38

Steak and kidney pie was a dinnertime staple when I was growing up. It wasn’t my favourite dish, but I didn’t mind it.

39

I ate brains and eggs when I was a kid, though I didn’t know it. My grandfather, Mustang, cooked them with garlic and ketchup (usually pork but sometimes calf or squirrel brains). I honestly don’t remember what they tasted like. I’ve also eaten stews that had hog’s head or deer heart in them, but it didn’t really greatly flavor the taste.

40

Stuffed pig intestines… yum. A lot of foreigners are put off by this admittedly odd-looking Korean dish, but it’s actually not that bad.

So many of my friends made such a fuss over the idea of haggis that I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but the first time I saw a plate of the stuff I was rather disappointed. It looked like meatloaf with cheese on it, and tasted pretty much the same.