My local groceries sometimes have pork kidneys, and they are amazingly cheap.
Being both an adventurous eater and cheapskate I had to try them, and they aren’t bad at all a bit like very mild liver in both taste and texture.
But there is an issue in that I have almost no sense of smell, my wife does though and she was going crazy searching the house because she thought our five year old had peed in a corner or something. Eventually she realized the odor was from the “filth” I was cooking and she said it was so strong she felt to vomit.
I did not notice any urine taste to the pork kidneys, but is there any way to cut the smell?
grude, seriously, if we can ever meetup I’ll take you, the missus, and grude jr out for a nice dinner. We’ll be in St Martin in January. Kayak over, maybe?
I’ll tell you something here I read online and told my wife that she says will change her diet forever, which is that pork kidneys are a common ingredient of pork sausage.
LOL I’m not eating them out of poverty or anything, ok the real story is I wanted to make or attempt to make British steak and kidney pie which is usually made with cow kidneys but having no source for those thought I’d try pork kidneys instead. But not wanting to waste time and beef if it tasted like shit I figured I’d see what pork kidneys tasted like by themselves first.
My food “experiments” are just a source of amusement for me, I’ll try anything EXCEPT feces, and yes there are some native foods from the far north of the globe that have animal feces in them.
EDIT:My wife has no place to complain really, her culturally loved foods include chicken foot souse and cowheel soup(don’t care for chicken feet, LOVE a good cowheel soup).
That might depend on where you get them. In the US, we have a lot of rules that actually prevent the use of offal, and then a whole lot of products that voluntarily omit it. Personally, I think it’s a shame, but that’s kind of a tangent.
It’s also kind of a tangent to ask why you antagonize your wife like this. Your other posts make it clear that you should be able to anticipate these kinds of conflicts at this point. Lord knows all of us knew how this would end.
Anyway… to the original question: everything I’ve read about eating kidneys says that you do not ever get rid of the smell (or taste) of urine/ammonia entirely. Pork kidneys are supposed to be worse in this regard than beef, and an older animal should be worse than a younger one. (So, calf kidneys might taste better, but would not be as cheap).
Soaking them seems to be standard. Milk is the go-to for all kinds of things with strong flavors, from anchovies to liver, perhaps because it has more capability than water to dissolve fats, or maybe because of enzymatic reactions. Anyway, the urine flavors you want to get rid of are soluble in water, so using water should work to some extent. I saw a cooking show use water with vinegar. Wine would probably work nicely (adding flavor in the meantime) but I suppose that goes back to being expensive.
Well I honestly did not think there would be enough residual urine in kidneys to effect the taste or smell, I remember reading that urine doesn’t even take on its distinctive stink until it has been evacuated from the body for a time and the urea breaks down to ammonia anyway. I did not expect a house full of stink honestly.
The water and vinegar trick sounds good, thanks.
There is more humor in this than it sounds typed out, my wife was initially repulsed by sushi or ceviche years ago and I have caught her eating it currently, she said it turns out she likes it and had a craving for it. So yea.
Perhaps instead of trying to mask the foul odor, you could just cook something normal, and thus less foul?
Reminds me of my ex who would sometimes buy and cook some of the more “exotic” organs / cuts of “meat” and I literally would have to evacuate the apartment during that time or I’d have choked to death on the fumes.
