Eat your Heart Out

This post is Part of Real food Wednesdays!


Many people who eat traditional foods have trouble incorporating organ meats into their diets. It seems thats Americans have somehow been led to beleive that organ meats are yucky. When people into traditional foods start talking about organ meats, the topic almost immediately goes to liver. Liver is indeed a nutritional powerhouse, especially when eaten raw or rare.

I'm not here to talk about liver. Well, Not today anyways. I want to talk about my favorite organ meat, heart.

Thats right. Nothing is quite as satisfying as munching down on a bog old chunk of beef heart. Here in south Texas I can go into almost any grocery store and find tongue, kidneys, sweetbreads, feet(not organs, I know), and heart.

Heart is great for those of you just starting out with organ meats. When you get a nice steak, What are you eating? Muscle. What is the heart? A muscle. Granted its smooth muscle unlike skeletal muscle, but its still muscle. So what do you think it would taste like? Muscle!

Heart is great for organ meat noobs because it takes like extra beefy beef. It does taste kinda strong, but it still tastes like beef. I can't get enough of it, and cooking it is easy too! Just grab a chunk of heart about two to four pounds, trim off any connective tissue, and treat it like a small roast. Throw it in an oven until the outside is golden brown and delicious and the inside is as pink or well done as you like. I personally like all my meat very rare, even heart.

Heart can be ground and used anywhere you use normal beef. You can put it in Chili, meatloaf, hamburgers, soups, stews, or anywhere!

I haven't even started to mention the vitamins and nutrients in beef heart. Its one of the best sources of CoQ10. CoQ10 is good for you heart. So eat heart for your heart. Heart also attracts the best fats to itself, which means even if you buy a regular supermarket heart, you'd be getting better fat than with any other cut of meat.

Another kind of heart I like is chicken hearts. They're cute little bite sized hearts. They taste kind of meaty like duck or goose meat. You can make all sorts of interesting stir fries with these little organ bombs. I like to throw them in a pan with a little coconut oil (feel free to use schmaltz or tallow or butter or ghee) and brown, then let them simmer in a little Vietnamese fish sauce. Use some roux or cornstarch to thicken it and you have an awesome chicken hearts and gravy. I'd make this more often but my roommate gets mad when I cook with fish sauce.

So next time you're out shopping get some heart. You'll be glad you did!