Offal recipes

From Cookipedia

(Redirected from Heart)

Pigs heads at Saquisili market in Ecuador

In this category you will find all recipes that contain organ meat (offal) as a main ingredient. Some of the recipes might be strange or unusual but hopefully they will give you some ideas and inspiration. Brain, liver, tongue, stomach sweetbread (pancreas), neck sweetbread (thymus), tripe (stomach), trotters (pig feet), kidney, lights (lung), heart, chitterlings (small intestine), sweetmeat (testicles), placenta, gizzard (crop), heart and caul are all categorised as offal though unfortunately kidney, liver and and tongue are the only common ingredients seen in most supermarkets nowadays.


Giblets is a culinary term for the edible offal of a fowl, typically including the heart, gizzard, liver, and other visceral (relating to the nervous system) organs. If you have any good recipes for any of the above, please feel free to add them.

From the wonderful Cookbook: Food In England;

Heard in Wigan Market:

Collier, admiring pendant heart, windpipe and lungs outside a butcher's shop:

I say guv'nor, how much for your watch and chain?

Health concerns

Aside from potentially being very high in cholesterol like in the case of the brain and liver, the offal of certain animals is unsafe to consume:

  • The liver of the polar bear is unsafe to eat because it is very high in vitamin A and can cause hypervitaminosis A, a dangerous disorder. This has been recognised since at least 1597 when Gerrit de Veer wrote in his diary that, while taking refuge in the winter in Nova Zemlya, he and his men became gravely ill after eating polar-bear liver.
  • Offal can be very high in cholesterol and saturated fats, including kidneys, stomach, intestines, heart, tongue and liver.

See also

Click here to expand the list of other useful meat cooking references