I love steak and kidney puddin’, and devilled kidneys, I could really go a liver, onion and bacon the way mum used to make it, chicken livers were my dearest companion, oh the cheap pate with brandy I made, and dirty rice of course. And now I’m tenderly coaxing a former vegetarian into trying dark muscle meat from chicken instead of light so there’ll be no organ meat in this household. Sigh.
Mum never made us try tripe or brains or anything exotic though. Just the cheap standbys of kidneys and livers of various beasts. I tell you what, learning to cut up a liver’ll cure squeamishness about where your meat comes from and what it really is - or it’ll make you a vegetarian. One or the other!
This one paragraph sounds like vintage Lewis Grizzard. Sampiro, if Grizzard can knock out a dozen books, you can handle one. Put your blackbird casserole down and start writing!
This doesn’t really count as “internal organs,” but I once tried head cheese in a German resaurant. Not disgusting, but all those bits of pigs’ ears and snouts are really tough to chew.
I lived in Ecuador for two years back in the early 90s. While Ecuador is a far, far cry from being as poor as, say, Bangladesh, it isn’t a place where they let a whole lot go to waste.
Among the strange (to my Asian-American palate) animals and parts I sampled:
Bull testicles
These were really, really awful. I ate them boiled in soup, where their already mushy consistency was only enhanced, and…shit, they were gross.
Cow hoof
This was food for the poorest of the poor. I was given a bowl of broth with a whole hoof in it. I was expected to eat the tiny bits of meat around the ankle (after picking the remaining hair off), then cut up and eat the hoof itself, which had been softened through long cooking.
Bull penis
Affectionately nicknamed tronquito de toro “little bull’s trunk,” this was mercifully diced into soup most of the times I was served it. However, there was one time I was given a large plate of white rice with a nine inch, veiny, bull’s dong on it.
Tripe
This is the stomach lining of a cow. If you’ve had the Mexican soup called menudo, you’ve had this. It’s really tough and cartilaginous in texture, but aside from that it doesn’t have much flavor of its own.
Udder
This one was the worst. The worst thing about organ meats versus muscle meats, to me at least, is always the texture. Udder has a taste and texture somewhere between really tough steak and cheddar cheese. Ick.
With the exception of kidneys and chitterlings, I’ve never been too put off by organ meats. In the case of the kidneys, I’m willing to stipulate that they might have been improperly prepared the one time I had them. I just can’t get past the smell of boiling pigshit that roils off of chitterlings and haven’t ever eaten them. Otherwise, I’ve consumed hearts, tongues, brains, sweetbreads, headmeat, etc. with gusto. Especially when I lived in Laredo TX, guts, skin, and other meat by-products were a major feature in the local cuisine. I love pork-skin tacos!
One of my favorite ever overheard items happened in a grocery store a few years ago. I ran into “Miss Maude”, a former schoolteacher who had since retired and was the type of sweet Aunt Clara type lil’ ol’ ladies who has nothing of interest to say but doesn’t let that stop them from talking forever and ever to anybody who’s too polite to walk away. She was also the type who can put the LOL in Little Old Lady, but never intentionally.
We were at the meat counter in the grocery store and she was blathering on and on sweetly and boringly about her petunias or some such and I smiled and nodded and tried to name all of the presidents in reverse chronological order in my mind to seem interested when a lady came up, looked in Ms. Maude’s basket and said “Excuse me, ma’am, but I notice you’re buying kidneys… I’ve never bought those but they’re so cheap I probley should get some. Could you tell me how you fix them?”
Miss Maude: “Well, dear, I just boil them in some water with some salt and pepper and seasonings and then leave them to cool on some paper towels and then when they’re cool enough to touch I tear 'em into small chunks.”
Woman: Hmmm. Do they taste okay?
Miss Maude: Well, I don’t eat 'em personally, but I don’t like red meat [insert long story about why she doesn’t eat red meat here], but Sam and Lou and Ray and Josie eat 'em like there’s no tomorrow!
Woman: Hmmm. Well, it’s less than a dollar, I’ll get some and try that. Thanks!
Miss Maude continued talking about her petunias or whatever, then when the woman was long out of earshot she cocked her head and asked, completely innocently and seriously, “Do you suppose I should have told that lady that I only cook kidneys for my cats?”
BrainGlutton, if the kidneys in your pie had an overpowering taste, then something was wrong. You normally can barely taste them, they add more to the texture than anything else.
I didn’t know what suet was until reading this thread. I normally make dumplings out of it.
I’ve had:
Calf and lamb liver
Cow’s tongue (used to have it on sandwiches at school)
Kidneys
Suet in dumplings
Haggis
Black pudding
Pate
A lot of the meats mentioned in this thread were popular with the older generations. I still remember my mum regularly buying tripe for my grandma (you hardly see it these days), who was also apparently skilled at picking the meat off a pig’s trotter.
All of those plus pig’s liver and sheep’s heart. Pig’s liver is best braised with bacon, whereas lamb’s liver is milder flavoured and more tender, and should be lightly fried (it should be just firm and losing its pinkness all through. Any more and it’s overdone). I’m not wild about tongue but it doesn’t squick me out. Black pudding and haggis I would both eat every day with no qualms at all.
Really it’s amazing what you can eat with fava beans and a light chianti.
What about when you consume the entire organism? When you eat softshell crabs, you are eating legs, eyes, guts, gonads, assholes and everything for example.
I love sweetbreads, my wife and I found a local restaurant that does a pretty good job with them. It’s funny, though, that when you order them the waitress says “You do know what sweetbreads are, right?”
Braunschweiger on pumpernickel with a slice of Vidalia onion, good stuff.
Foie gras is a nice treat to have once or twice a year.
Had menudo in Denver last summer, not bad but not great.
I ate some pig brains on a dare at a pig roast once.
Pickled turkey gizzards, I used to have a big jar of them in my dorm room. Good snacks with beer.
I used to eat deer liver and heart before CWD, shame about that.
I’m sure there are more variations that I’ve had, but it’s all I can think of right now.
I’ve always loved chicken hearts, but in San Francisco’s Chinatown, you can get a little to-go box of them in a teriyaki-like sauce and just walk around enjoying the sights, eating your hearts out of a box.
I haven’t had liver for decades, but it’s okay if it isn’t overdone, tough and dry.
I’ve had steak and kidney pie a handful of times. IIRC the steak predominated. Either I’ve been lucky and always gotten the few good ones, or the people who’ve gotten bad ones are unlucky.
