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!

Who's Afraid of Beef? or: Why the recall should be pointless

So my first blog post was about probiotics. Remember them? The friendly bugs?

Well if people ate a more proper diet Including probiotics, this beef recall would be a non-issue. Bacteria like E. Coli exist in the colon naturally. They help digest our food,. In fact, E. Coli is known for its ability to "clean house" in the intestines.

Some people, especially those on a diet called "The Primal Diet" actually make it a point to eat spoiled meat. If your intestinal flora are already in fine shape and diverse, then a little E. Coli will only help, not hurt.

So if you take your probiotics, eat probiotic food like yogurt and sauerkraut, and avoid chlorinated water and preservatives (both of which slaughter your intestinal flora,) you would see why this beef recall is really a joke.

Instead we have people running around with weak, sparse intestinal flora, who aren't eating right. Its no surprise that their bodies can't handle it. Thee is so much 'house cleaning' to do , that the E. Coli overloads their systems and makes them sick.

So if you keep your body in tune, and your intestinal flora healthy and happy, you should be able to enjoy your beef this Memorial Day, no matter how 'contaminated' the beef is.

This same thing goes for salmonella and eggs. Many healthy people have had salmonella living in their gut and never gotten sick, as long as the 'good' bacteria are there to keep it in check, you may have a single case of diarrhea when you first catch. You probably wouldn't even notice it. Many people with healthier intestinal flora don't.

So if you use probiotics regularly and care for your internal bug garden, have a piece of beef and some homemade eggnog for me.


Yeah I know eggnog isn't a memorial day drink. Just go with me on this one.