off cuts of "meat"??

i am riffing off my testicle thread and expanding here.

what about other cuts of the animal.

sweetbreads?
brain?
kidney
liver?
bone marrow?

i've never tried sweetbreads and brain. my friend got a plate once and called it "fear-factor food" right there in the expensive restaurant. it was some sweetbread dish. i didnt try it. in taiwan, i was offered a big steaming bowl of braised rooster nuts. again, i buckled.

i can eat chicken feet and **** combs. sliced pig ears? pass the whiskey!

you?

cockscombs..

Sweetbreads are delicious. I like them on the smaller side, charred on a grill, S&P & fresh lemon.

Not the prettiest thing to prep though.

I ate crumbed and fried lamb brains once. The flavor wasn't bad, very mild. The texture was terrible though, similar to an over-ripe banana fritter.
I quite like most other offal, they keep things interesting.

Sweetbreads are fantastic, both lamb and calf. Chicken liver is great for making sauces. Chicken hearts are great breaded and fried. Roasted bone marrow on toast with chives is delicious.

My stepfather is a big fan of sweatbreads. He'll be celebrating his 90th next March and I'm on the hook to prepare some.

I've tried them once and couldn't get past the smell.

Do like marrow. Don't like liver (except from quackers and as pate) but will cut them and hearts out of deer I take for friends.

I too am a fan of offal. Never had good brain though, something about the consistency throws me.

daveb said:

My stepfather is a big fan of sweatbreads. He'll be celebrating his 90th next March and I'm on the hook to prepare some.

I've tried them once and couldn't get past the smell.

Do like marrow. Don't like liver (except from quackers and as pate) but will cut them and hearts out of deer I take for friends.

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Did you soak the sweatbreads in lemon water? The ones I made had no smell at all, and the taste was very mild.

When I was a kid, my uncle introduced me to a few of his favorites: pork liver (seasoned and with a bay leaf) wrapped in caul fat was a tasty bbq addition; pork skin braciole, which I had a hard time putting down the only time I tried it; and of course tripe in tomato sauce which stunk like hell but tasted pretty good.
My Grandfather used to eat scrambled eggs & brains. Didn't try that one.
Not a huge fan of sweetbreads, but chicken hearts...now that's good eatin'.
I once dated a Canadian girl whose grandmother used to make a great dish from cod tongues. I wish I had that recipe.

ecchef said:

When I was a kid, my uncle introduced me to a few of his favorites: pork liver (seasoned and with a bay leaf) wrapped in caul fat was a tasty bbq addition; pork skin braciole, which I had a hard time putting down the only time I tried it; and of course tripe in tomato sauce which stunk like hell but tasted pretty good.
My Grandfather used to eat scrambled eggs & brains. Didn't try that one.
Not a huge fan of sweetbreads, but chicken hearts...now that's good eatin'.
I once dated a Canadian girl whose grandmother used to make a great dish from cod tongues. I wish I had that recipe.

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Maybe something like this?

https://youtu.be/BorJez3B7HA


https://youtu.be/RqULrokmMi0

Tacos de cabeza (cows head) are very common in northern Mexico. They cook the head whole, most people eat the combination of all meats (tongue, cheek, palate, etc) but the eyes and brain are reserved apart, only the connoisseur ask for those.

fresh head cheese, garnished with fine diced onions,cornichon and a mild vinaigrette, just typing it makes my mouth water........

sweetbreads, i fell in love with from the first time i had them.

My grandmother made some mean pigs feet, remember eating them as a kid, haven't had them in 40-50 years

Beef tendon. My kid and I love it in Pho. DH gaggs when we order it.

I'm going to try my hand using an Italian recipe for tripe. Watched an episode of Bizarre Foods that focused on offal dishes in Rome and it sounded like something I'd like.

Soak sweatbreads in milk over night. Gently poach them in stock and aromatics low and slow, till cooked through and firm, peel them while they are still hot. They are great sliced like foie and seared hard and basted in butter and aromatics, or cut them chicken nugget sized and fry them as such, really good.

I am using all of the ingredients above, all are delicious 😋
Calf brain it s nice fried, sweetbreads are the most delicious ingredients you can have in a risotto 😉
Fricassee it's a Italian dish (French also) which it's basically caramelised onion, garlic and stir-fry calf lever.
Bone marrow it's nice in ragù or roasted. You can also gently smoked it and slice it than parried with scallops 😋

In Mexico suburbs (Leon) the taco truck outside of my ex's house served steamed cow brain tacos and steamed cartilage tacos. The brains were mushy and the consistency the fat residue you get in the lobster shell when boiling them. Looked a bit like steamed cauliflower, but nowhere near the taste. Tasted like pretty much nothing except for the onions, cilantro and radish it came with. The cartilage was steamed so long it was soft enough to bend like an old and soggy carrot but still had just a touch of snap to it when you bite into it. They were mixing it with a finely chopped meat but it was lost in translation, I thought it might just be tendons and the bits of meat attached but there was too much meat for it to be just the scraps you normally see. The taste of the cartilage was "chalky" if you can imagine that? Bite into it and it was soft but a very slight grainy and dry texture, really no flavor (like the brains) and not sure if there's any nutritional value at all to eating it, but hey, at least they're using every part of the animal!

Through international travel, I've eaten every part of a cow from nose to tail...except for two things; ovaries and eyes (although I've had lamb and fish eyes...). I know in South America they eyes in soup so I'll be trying it when I go to a bachelor party in Columbia in January. Don't think anyone eats cow ovaries outside of women taking it as a pill for "natural breast enhancement", lol.

mille162 said:

In Mexico suburbs (Leon) the taco truck outside of my ex's house served steamed cow brain tacos and steamed cartilage tacos.

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Ha ha, how much did you have to pay them to get them to set up outside of your ex's house?

With spongiform, prions mad cow disease being a reality I have been avoiding eating brain and nervous tissue. There seemed to be also a case of a fellow with spongiform in his brain who had a habit of eating squirrel brains and eggs reported a few years ago...

All of that are French cuisine classics. Here exemple with images taken randomly fro the web.
sweetbreads (of veal) : ris de veau aux morilles - a speciality from Lyon


kidneys (veal, porc essentially), cook with a porto sauce: rognon de veau sauce madere.


Liver. Well the famous fat liver form goose/duck. But we also eat the liver from chicken, porc, beef, veal, rabbit etc... My favourite: fat live from duck minute with apples (just cooked 15 sec per side).


bone marrow: os a moelle. Just boiled the bone in salty water, then take the narrow and put it on a slice of rustic white bread and and some salt on the top. Have that with a glass of bourgone. Enjoy life.



Altogether I am just in LOVE with the off cuts. Super tasty, texture is very interesting, and (except for the liver) not expensive.

WildBoar said:

Ha ha, how much did you have to pay them to get them to set up outside of your ex's house?

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in her neighborhood it was literally every other block had a small food cart. End of the street was chorizo truck which became my favorite. At 10pm, 1-2 garage doors per block roll up and someones mom is cooking something special and selling it off a card table. Directly across from her garage door was chicken feet. Mostly steamed/fried or picked, but done like 5 different ways. No matter how drunk we were coming home, I still couldn't develop a taste for them...I swear, I think I ate at a restaurant once in her neighborhood despite being there a month, it was always a friends food truck, garage, or sidewalk card table to get our tacos!

guari said:

Maybe something like this?

https://youtu.be/BorJez3B7HA


https://youtu.be/RqULrokmMi0

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Nope - Canadian (Newfie) version is much simpler:

[video=youtube;Vygxgy7siws]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vygxgy7siws[/video]

i got the tongue, heart, liver from our killed deer.

we hate the nuts,
ate quail hearts
the gizzards
rabbits.

glad we never killed a coyote.

You don''t have to eat the predators. It's a rule. And possums and armadillos are predators.

You have feral hogs in CA or have the taxes run them off?:groucho:

My Oma used to make lambs brains in white sauce for me all of the time when I was a kid. I've never attempted to make it as her recipe was in her head, and I haven't found one to follow. Anyone have one?