Every Friday I try to cook some sort of offal. I’m usually exhausted by Friday because of the work week, juggling a full time job with cooking/preparing everything I eat can be tiring. The first time I tried liver was on a Friday and I noticed Saturday I had way more energy. So now I always try to have some before the weekend so I can enjoy my couple days off.
Last night I participated in a Real Food Twitter party and it was hilariously fun! During the chat, someone mentioned eating heart with bacon. I had heart sitting in the fridge waiting for Friday and some bacon in the freezer. I like bacon so I decided to give it a try. Here’s what I came up with, and it was really good! Of course I always use lots of onion whenever I cook organ meats. Something about onions just cuts the taste/texture of meaty dishes.
Beef Heat, Bacon, Butter and Onion
1 beef heart, cut up into cubes, remove stringy tissue
6-10 slices bacon (nitrite-free)
1 onion
2 tbsp butter
garlic
salt & pepper
Cook bacon in a cast iron skillet. Once done, set aside and cut/break into pieces. Place in a large dish.
Sprinkle salt, pepper and garlic over beef heart pieces. Cook heart in bacon grease left in the skillet. Add to bacon pieces and toss.
In a separate pan, saute onions in butter. Once done, add to bacon & beef, toss to mix.
Note: you can cook the onion with the beef heart in the bacon grease, but I prefer cooking separately in butter, because nothing is better than onions in butter.
Serve with some random veggies and enjoy!
You are so brave! My goodness. I still haven't come around to organs yet. But maybe… maybe I will? Did this actually taste good? 😉
Oh this was really good. I ate it for dinner, a late night snack, lunch the next day, and then was disappointed when I came to get some for dinner and there was hardly any left. Heart is the easiest organ meat to like, as the texture and flavor are very similar to plain meat.
I ordered a half cow about 1 month ago and am loving it. I did get the organs but have not tried any. I am incredibly happy that I came across a heart and bacon recipe so thanks for this! I will be giving this a try when I feel like eating cow heart… lol.
I’ve cooked beef heart (from grass-fed cow) on the grill as kebabs (following the Nourishing Traditions cookbook recipe), and it has come out delicious every time! I agree with cooking anything beef related with onions. They are a perfect match. I find the flavor and texture of beef heart to be quite close to beef skeletal muscle, perhaps a little tougher and chewy, but in a good way.
The reason heart is easy to like is because it’s a muscle just like any other “normal” meat. It is an organ, but is made of muscle tissue, unlike liver and other offal.
@Primal Toad Let me know when you try it, how have you been liking the rest of 1/4 grass fed cow?
@Aaron Blaisdell , @Frank Heart is a muscle so it makes sense that it’s close to regular meat in texture and flavor. But, so is tongue and I really haven’t found a good way to eat that yet. The texture of tongue really bothers me. If either of you know a good recipe for that let me know!
wow, this looks awesome. I try to eat offal frequently too, and it is usually cow heart! Although ive always stewed it. No one can ever tell the difference between “normal” stew meat and the cubed heart. Im going to try this next time for sure, though. Thanks.
@Kat
I’ve only had tongue once in my life, as a teenager, and hated it. Even though it’s a muscle like skeletal muscle and heart muscle, it is also covered with a skin of taste receptors and mucousal glands which is probably why it is so icky. I haven’t thought to try making it now that I’ve gone primal. But I do love real offal, such as liver (even beef), sweetbreads, and kidneys.
@ben Oh I haven’t tried stewing heart, sounds good. I’ll have to try that.
@Aaron Blaisdell I have made tongue a couple times and removing the skin was pretty easy, but the overall texture of the tongue meat is still strange. I’m going to try grinding it up with some regular ground beef to see if it’s good that way. I have never tried sweetbreads, still looking for a source to get them from. Not sure why the farmers around here don’t seem to have any.
Here is what I do to beef heart. Its a bit complicated but totally worth it.
Use this recipe simply for cooking directions, forget the lima, parsnips and potatoes and bullion (im sure you have your own stock) — http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/beef-heart-en-mole/Detail.aspx
Use this mole recipe —–http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2005/11/a_frugal_gourme.html
I make a double batch and save the rest for chicken later on.
This is great on lettuce tacos with avocado, queso fresco and sour cream. The meat will be shreddable and the mole sauce will keep it moist and tender.
I was given a gift of some beef heart and beef liver this morning when I stocked up on meat at the farmers market. I’ll be giving your recipe a shot over the next couple of days.
I had a horrible heart incident, but mastered tongue, lol! I found & followed directions for cutting the skin off the tongue, then threw it in with a chuck roast and did it like a normal delicious pot roast, long & slow cooked.
But the heart, I followed a recipe in Joy of Cooking to steam it in the oven and failed
miserably. I just couldn’t keep the steam going, so it was cooked w/o any moisture and tasted just like plain old dry overcooked roast beef.
So my conclusion was that both needed to be cooked like slow-cooking roasts, but here you’re doing it quick cooked. I’m surprised it was tender & not tough w/o time to break down whatever usually needs to be broken down? I still haven’t totally figured out the secrets behind how to know when to cook what cuts slow vs. fast, whole vs. cut up.
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