Organ Meat recipes

Ms. Marjory mentioned in today's webinar (https://vimeo.com/612701082) how many people have trouble eating organ meats, but that they are very nutritious. I, frankly LOVE organ meats! Let's compile some good recipes.

Here is my Christmas Pate recipe:



1/2 pound chicken livers

2 boiled eggs

1/2 cup chicken broth

4 tablespoons butter (more if you want to add softened butter to the pate after it is finished)

1/2 cup finely chopped onion or shallot

1 pinch parsley

1 shot brandy

salt and pepper to taste

a pinch +/- (to taste) each nutmeg, cloves and mustard powder

a couple dashes Worcestershire sauce



Cook the livers in the broth, simmering about 10 minutes (if you like mushrooms, you can add a few, finely chopped at this point)

drain and reserve the broth

mash the livers and boiled eggs to a very smooth paste (you can use a food mill or food processor, but a fork works fine)

lightly brown the onions in the butter - get them very soft

add the onions, brandy and a little broth at a time, until you get the right consistency

add the spices, tasting as you go



Serve on crackers or buttered toast. You can add or substitute a lot of things - some people like a little hot pepper, some use bourbon, Irish whiskey or a sweet wine like port, sherry or madeira. Toasted pecans go really well with it. Sometimes I make an Asian flavored version using soy sauce, ginger and sesame oil.... but the above has a real Christmasy flavor. It is also great in a meat pie with some steak or deer meat.

I will have to try your recipe there, I love paté but I have never managed to eat any home made stuff, it tastes fine, but the smell as it's baking is terrible and really puts me off.

Here's a project recipe

Haggis (1773 recipe)
1 mutton paunch (can just use a bread tin or a cloth)
1 sheep's heart
1 set sheep's lungs
1 sheep's liver
White pepper
Cayene pepper
Nutmeg
Onions
a Handful of oatmeal
1lb beef suet
1 glass strong stock
1 glass Athole brose (equal parts whisky cream and honey)

Wash the paunch and turn it inside out
Boil the hearts , lungs and liver for half an hour chop the meat very finely except half the liver that must be grated when quite cold (Use a mincer)
season with salt pepper and nutmeg
Chop the onions and add
add the grated liver and oatmeal
chop the suet and add that
mix all well together with the stock
Fill the paunch leaving enough space for the oatmeal to swell (you could wrap it in a cloth and boil or put in a bread tin and waterbath in the oven)
prick all over with a needle
Boil 3 hours
Serve with old whisky or Athole brose.

For those who have not had haggis, you should not be able to identify the different meats in it it should be coarser and dryer than paté and the main taste is pepper. It doesn't taste of offal at all since lungs and heart taste like muscle meat.

I can definitely eat some haggis!  I grew up near the biggest Highland Games in the US on Grandfather Mountain.... plenty of Robert Burns dinners, too.  

Don't want to re- or mis-direct this thread, but I'd like recipes for people who gag at the smell/taste of liver et al.  I've tried... made Chicken Liver Knishes, dough and all... they looked delicious and tasted like liver.. ugh.  Also minced beef heart, simmered in highly flavored tomato sauce.. forever to tenderize, and it still tasted like.. organ meat.  And I've never met a goat dairy product that didn't smell like a barn.   I think that our taste/sense organs vary, as much as eye & hair color, etc, and what tastes lovely to some, tastes quite different to others.  Darn!!

Thank you both for these good-looking recipes! I love heart and liver, but have always bestowed the lungs on the dog due to their unfamiliar shape and texture. I had also overlooked haggis, foolishly believing its reputation as comically unapproachable, but now that I see this recipe I'll certainly have to try it next time I butcher a lamb!

Harmony d'Eyre wrote:Thank you both for these good-looking recipes! I love heart and liver, but have always bestowed the lungs on the dog due to their unfamiliar shape and texture. I had also overlooked haggis, foolishly believing its reputation as comically unapproachable, but now that I see this recipe I'll certainly have to try it next time I butcher a lamb!

The deal on lungs is to use them very fresh from a healthy animal.  A lot of organ meats are no longer legal for sale, or very rare if they are.  Lungs/lights, tripe, brains, and such.  All were once common for farmers and hunters.  Steak and kidney pie... stuffed and roasted hearts... even the old head cheese that my great grandparents made (the Scottish ones included the eyes)... none of that is common anymore.