This Tastes Offal!

How I Learned to Love Organs, and Why You Should Stop Leaving the Best Parts to the Coyotes

by Richard Baimbridge

There’s a joke in China that they eat everything except the table. If you ever travel in Asia, you’ll find this is true. Visit a wet market or go for street food in the bustling night markets and you’ll see all manner of things that typically send most Western people running. Pigs’ ears, chicken feet, duck tongue and all kinds of internal organs (aka “offal” in the English language) are standard fare on the menu.

I remember the first time I brought a deer home to my wife (who is Asian), and she looked at me and asked, “Where’s the rest of it?” I stood there confused for a while. “What rest of it?” I asked. She said, “The organs!” When I told her I tossed them in the woods for the coyotes, she practically made me get back in the car to go get them. “How could you waste all that food?” she yelled at me.

I promised her I’d never do that again, and lo and behold, next time I shot a deer I had my freezer bags ready as my hunting buddy was about to toss the organs. He looked at me strangely, but nodded politely when I explained that my wife wanted them. And sure enough, the result was a delicacy that I never would’ve imagined. We ate organs for weeks -- even the kids loved them.

My wife understood something that most of our grandparents knew long ago, but which has been forgotten in recent times -- organs (or offal, if you prefer) are both delicious and exceptionally healthy.

I’m old enough to remember being scolded to “eat your liver” -- something you don’t hear much these days. Yet liver is an excellent source of Vitamin A, protein, and B12 among other things – more so even than the finest cuts of meat. In fact, liver is so nutrient-rich that eating too much of it can lead to toxic levels of Vitamin A. So, it should be eaten in moderation, and avoided in certain cases like pregnancy and gout.  

Perhaps that’s a small part of why we quit eating it. The typical American now consumes less than 0.5 pounds of liver per capita. The majority of it produced in the USA today is either shipped to foreign countries or used as pet food. Yet it was once a staple of our diet.

The main reasons for America falling out of love with liver and other organs seem to come down to a few simple things: taste, economics, and health misconceptions. I’ll address the last two first…

Eating organs was common during the Great Depression, when many folks couldn’t afford the finer cuts of meat. Thus, they developed a reputation as “poor man’s food.” Even so, peak popularity for liver and kidneys came between the 1950’s-70’s, before suddenly crashing to all-time lows. The reason? A hyper-focus on lean cuts of meat and demonization of fats and cholesterol that was, in fact, the catalyst to carb-based diets and our current obesity epidemic.

But what about the taste? If liver is so good, why did kids have to be shamed into eating it?

The answer to that question seems to lie in the fact that organs are so nutrient-dense that they taste “funny.” Then there’s the issue of texture, which is unlike most other foods we eat, can be “chewy.” Part of that is cultural norms, and another part is lack of knowledge on how to prepare and cook organs properly – a skill that’s quickly disappearing.

I grew up near the Mexican border in South Texas, where local cuisine is very much influenced by Mexican culture. So, things like “lengua” (cow tongue tacos) and “tripas” (intestines) and even “cabeza” (cow/pig head) were very familiar to me. Later on, I lived in Mexico. I recall my surprise when ordering lengua on the street one day in Mazatlán as a man casually tossed a huge cow tongue on the table, hacked it into tiny pieces with a butcher knife, then loaded the bits onto small corn tortillas. I sprinkled some freshly chopped cilantro on top with a twist of lime, and it was one of the best things I ever tasted.

I deeply respect the fact that other cultures see so much waste in the Western diet – specifically that we throw away “the best parts of the animal.” This concept is now catching on in the West, as witnessed by the popularity of books like “The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating” by Fergus Henderson.

I think that, as hunters, this philosophy honors the animals we kill and consume, brings variety to our diets, and makes us rethink some of the attitudes we have towards food – whether those attitudes be personal or cultural. I’m reminded of the amazing lengua tacos I enjoyed on the street in Mazatlán that day. I’m glad that I have an open-mind towards food… It would’ve been a shame to miss out on something so delicious, otherwise.

Have a favorite cooking tip or recipe you’d like to share? Click here to become a part of our community!