The Best Way To Prepare Organ Meat For Beginners
In the United States, we're used to cooking with the more aesthetic parts of an animal. Generally, when most Americans go to a grocery store, they're looking for something like a chicken breast, sirloin steak, or salmon filet, not chicken feet, beef heart, or fish livers. But as any chef worth their salt (or any home cook who comes from a culture that isn't afraid of culinary innovation) will tell you, those organ meats are where it's at. When prepared properly, they provide a huge amount of flavor and nutrition at an affordable price.
But if you've never cooked with organ meats before and you'd like to learn, where do you start? What's the best way to get into organ meat preparation without falling on your face and scaring yourself off? It turns out the secret is a lot simpler than you might think: break out the grinder for a beginner-friendly intro to organ meat.
Grinding makes organ meat much easier to work with
There are multiple reasons you should be grinding your organ meats to get the most out of them. First, it makes this meat much easier to work with. Dealing with delicate organ meats isn't as much of a problem for professional chefs, but if you're a home cook working with them for the first time, you probably don't want to leap straight into the deep end. The simple task of grinding meat cuts down on the need for technical know-how.
Second, the biggest issue with organ meats for those who have less-experienced palates isn't really flavor. Instead, it's the texture. That's because organ meats can have a softer texture that doesn't work for a lot of people.
Ground meat is more forgiving and gets around the texture issue entirely, particularly if you blend that mixture with meat from the same (or a similar) animal, like beef, turkey, or bison. You don't even have to find a standalone meat grinder if you don't want to. You can simply ask your butcher to grind up organ meat for you, or buy a grinder attachment for your stand mixer.
How do you cook once the meat is ground?
As far as how to actually cook the ground-up offal, that depends on which meat (and which organ) you're working with. Ground liver is an obvious choice here, as it can form the base for classic paté. Meats such as hearts, stomachs, and kidneys are slightly more challenging, but only a bit. They go especially well in a mixture of ground beef or bison that's served up as burgers. Just be sure to sautee the meats before you grind and add them to the mixture, and thoroughly cook everything in the mix, too. That's because raw or undercooked organ meats present health risks that a medium rare steak does not.
Ultimately, cooking organ meats doesn't need to be nearly as daunting as you might have once feared. The hardest part might actually be getting your friends to try the results, no matter how delicious they are. Hopefully, your beginner-friendly use of ground organ meat will convince them otherwise.