Thread: Offal, the nasty bits

@JessicaChen offal is another great example where Brining/Soaking makes a great improvement to table quality of game meat etc.I grew up basically living on Home Kills/grown on our own farm & never was a great fan of offal as frankly my mum was a shit cook ,where as my Nan was a fantastic Old School cook who made the best Steak & Kidney pie l have ever ate.

As you get older l guess your tastes change as while working in the Top End of Oz Water Buffalo tongue cooked by proper Old School station cooks was something l really looked forward to as well as real old fashioned fruit cakes & scones .Our hunting group, who have been hunting together 14 years this year, have a tradition going back a decade where a mate who worked as a Chef in European Ski Resorts for a decade uses the Canada Geese we shoot to make a fantastic Pate,we also under his tuition (mainly swearing) that on our Hut fly in trips we have a meal of thinly sliced deer heart ,cooked with a copious amount of butter with onion,garlic,thinly chopped home made Pancetta & mushrooms served on a bed of spaghetti .It is a meal that always brings back memories in between long over due hunts or China Flu lock downs.

Disliking tripe is perfectly understandable but the rest are some of the best bits. Heart, liver and kidney diced and fried in butter with onions and just a hint of chilli served on mashed spud with lots of butter and a gravy made from the pan juices and burnt bits is a no 1 go to for us.
There is anot her bonus about we eating the offal so far not mentioned. You get to closely inspect it before you eat and will pick up any abnormalities/disease that you may otherwise miss that could affect the entire carcass.

Having deer liver heart and kidneys for tea tonight. Younger the animal the better I believe.
Still those hinds my son shot we were able to mostly harvest all of the above. So it's a mixed bag and it's all eatable.
Still like the filets though, well venison is all good even the sausages.
KH

We usually have the heart, fried up in butter, that night in the hut. Never kept liver but love lambs fry and bacon. Won't have tripe in my kitchen. When I was a kid the sweet breads were always mine and the old man reckoned skirt steak had the best flavor (I believe that is the diaphragm) cooked up in a stew. Only reason I don't bring liver out is I don't like to have ofal out of a fridge any length of time.

Originally Posted by 7mmwsm

Do you eat the marrow out of chops?

Who doesn’t? Love that stuff.

From the book Cazador game offal and the rest by Dariush lolaiy some may remember Cazador from the 80s, the deerstalkers had dinners there, and if you wanted something special for a party you could arrange to bring in a dead thing and Tony would cook it a myriad of ways for your group, and sometimes throw in a bottle of plum brandy
Anyhow here's an offal recipe from the book.

Greetings All,
As a child we ate all sorts of offal. Brains, sweetbreads, hearts, liver, if it was cheap we ate it. Later, shooting goats for meat the liver always came home. I always sat the liver on top of the gut bag and carefully sliced the gall bladder of. A cobber and I did a trip into Kiwi Saddle hut long ago. I gave him stern instructions that the liver from any deer he shot was to be recovered on pain of him being marched out there to get it. I slow cooked it in the camp oven with my share of the bacon. He was not having a bar of his share going anywhere near the liver. I was enjoying my tea and looked around and the bugger was spooning the left over gravy his bacon. Another plus for liver I expect. My son always drops me of the liver from deer he has shot, even though he is not all keen on it.
Regards Grandpamac.

Originally Posted by swanny

Only reason I don't bring liver out is I don't like to have ofal out of a fridge any length of time.

Thats fair, I think liver goes bad quite quickly. I usually cook them up immediately or freeze it.

Originally Posted by muzza

I use a maggi cup of soup satchet - usually mushroom - to make the sauce for my version of liver and bacon.

Il have to try that if I am too lazy to get ingredients for a cream sauce made from scratch, or if shops are closed. When I make a cream sauce I would use onion, mushrooms, thyme, deglaze with white wine, add stock, parsley, fresh cream.... its a pain but its so good.

Originally Posted by Phil_H

Sharon isn't big on offal and most definitely won't let tripe or tongue anywhere near her kitchen.

I don't blame her on the tripe side of things. Cleaning it is smelly messy work.

@Marty Henry thanks for the recipe, I have it saved now and will give it a go when I gain access to the ingredients. Hoping to get a deer in the next couple of months.

Fresh is best when it comes to ...offal , not that i call it that , offal lends its self to something you just throw away , no matter what your eating , liver , heart , kidney straight off the hoof is outrageously good , i rarely freeze any of it , lamb or beef sweetbreads BOOM , im not one to gorge my self , well maybe sweetbreads but the point is a good nosh up now and again probably offsets the rashers of bacon i toss in with it , along with eggs . black & white pudding or haggis is also very good for breakfast & in my opinion that stuff is the life blood , sticks to ya ribs all day .
Happy Hunting .

I generally go for most kinds of offal, but in particular the tongue, followed by heart, liver and kidneys.

The family's meal of choice is beef tongue served hot, but not corned.

Had my 7 year old recently tell his 5 year old brother that he would enjoy the beef brisket because it tasted like tongue

Originally Posted by Phil_H

Just to add to my post above, quite co-incidentally I came across this old article in Stuff from 2012

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/796...-hunters-death

It is about one of NZ victims of Mad Cow disease. He was a keen hunter and a meat inspector. He was John Andrews aged 63 years. Possibly some on the forum knew him or knew of him.

Cheers
Phil

Does cooking not make the meat or brain safe ?

I eat the deer heart if it is not buggered but the rest is pig bait

Originally Posted by Phil_H

From all my reading @veitnamcam, no. The offending prions are extremely heat resistant. You would have to turn the brain into cinder before it would be effected.
This is in contrast to like of tuberculosis. Cooking tuberculosis infected meat makes it safe to eat. The danger is getting the disease into your lungs through the blood or as been suggested even the vapour that can come off the gut when you are gutting it....but I digress.

On that point though, even though I eat offal I always inspect it well before I choose to take it as food. Slightest little thing that even give a hint of and abnormality I throw it.....usually into the maggot farm for the chooks.

Cheers
Phil

Good to know.
I had thought if things were properly cooked there was very low risk of catching anything.
Makes sense now the massive cull they did a few years back.

Originally Posted by Phil_H

From all my reading @veitnamcam, no. The offending prions are extremely heat resistant. You would have to turn the brain into cinder before it would be effected.
This is in contrast to like of tuberculosis. Cooking tuberculosis infected meat makes it safe to eat. The danger is getting the disease into your lungs through the blood or as been suggested even the vapour that can come off the gut when you are gutting it....but I digress.

On that point though, even though I eat offal I always inspect it well before I choose to take it as food. Slightest little thing that even give a hint of and abnormality I throw it.....usually into the maggot farm for the chooks.

Cheers
Phil

Great thread.

Must be mentioned the NZ cases of Jakob-Kreutzfeldt Disease are sporadic and NOT linked to diet and seems to strike people in their 50s and 60s. The 1990s UK New-Variant JKD was linked to eating diseased meat.

In the UK, the problem arose from massively magnifying a rarely occurring disease - through the practice of grinding up cattle, brains and all, and adding this mix to cattle feed. It was a gross break in the golden rule, to do as you'd be done by, to feed any species a cannibalistic diet, and who would have predicted the consequences.