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!

Beans, The Musical Fruit!

It doesn't matter whether you call them pulses or legumes, beans are one of my favorite foods!
I've heard some conflicting evidence on beans. Some say they are difficult to digest and mildly toxic, while others claim the longest lived cultures on earth eat plenty of beans. I tend to believe the latter more. Just look at the Japanese, they have taken soy, aw very unhealthy bean, and turned it into miso and natto. Two of the healthiest foods around!

These days even the average megamart has a variety of beans to choose from. You can find dried butter beans, organic anasazi beans, and even mayocoba beans. My personal favorite is good old fashioned pinto beans.

Cooking with dried beans is simple. I fill the pot I want to cook with about a third full with beans, then I cover them with water and let them soak overnight. If I can I change the water every three or four hours. Soaking beans is important for the same reason as soaking grains. Its draws out excessive phytates and other antinutrients. It is possible to cook beans without soaking them or to use the fast soak method, but they will not be as healthy.

After your beans have soaked, give them some new water and start cooking. Bring them to a boil then allow them to simmer. I find it usually takes me about two hours.

Whatever you do , don't ass salt until your beans are cooked through! Salt virtually stops the cooking process! Wait until your beans have softened to your preference before salting.

Salt brings up the next topic. Seasoning. Almost any common culinary spice will work with beans. My all time favorite bean spice is cumin. It is almost mandatory for beans here in Texas. Sometimes I will also ad a chili powder blend to make a kind of (I cringe when I say this but I don't know what else to call it) vegetarian chili. Don't get carried away though if your chili powder has salt in it, you can get carried away and easily add too much chili powder and have extra salty beans. Always check the label.

You can make a more greek style bean recipe by using cinnamon, anise and allspice to your beans.

Enjoy

This blog is part of Real food wednesdays.