Has any one ever cooked Ox Heart?

[PurpleHeather]

I bought one on the market today it was £1.99 and weighed over 5lb. I have chopped it up and have it cooking for the dog (well half of it, it was too big to fit into my slow cooker)

I have cut off and  rendered down the fat then cooked all the outside pieces and the inside parts which are a bit unattractive to look at and am left with 2lb of pure, fatless protein.

I will make a second batch for the pooch with it but am wondering if any one has cooked and eaten it because, to be honest it looks like really good meat and for the price it seems like a bargain. I know we British are a bit funny when it comes to offal.

Got a big pot of dripping and a dog wandering around sniffing the smell coming from the kitchen.

[Digeroo]

I remember disecting one at school, put me right off, and its a long time since I was a school.

Found this one looks interesting.

http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-herb-stuffed-beef-heart

Expect that three hours cooking slowly in red wine might soften it up.

[Trevor_D]

Apparently, my mother used to cook it quite often in the '30s when she was poor. (She worked in a butchers then, so I expect it was real cut price.) I don't imagine she used red wine to cook it in, but I know she used to stew it slowly. Try looking in old recipe books.

But why are you cooking it for your dog? He/she'd much prefer it raw. (I've just spent an hour cutting up some lamb's lights for our dog. They go in the freezer in dog-sized portions and she has them raw.)

[small]

Cut it into chunks like you would stewing steak and casserole with root veg, herbs, red wine, whatever you usually use, it's absolutely delicious.  It's such a shame so many people don't eat offal any more - when I was at work I was the only person who ever cooked liver......and when I described making pig's head brawn, it emptied the staffroom!

[BarriedaleNick]

Did soemthing like this as a student

http://significantkinks.solelyfictional.org/?p=29  remember is being tasty!!

[saddad]

We ate it a lot when we we were poor (in the '70's) it makes an excellent sandwich meat (being very fine grained) we just cooked it in the oven under foil like any other meat... as long as you avoid the ventricles and septum it is great stuff... met OH in 1980 and she refuses to even countenance it... 

[Borlotti]

No.

[Sparkly]

We ate it a lot when we we were poor (in the '70's) it makes an excellent sandwich meat (being very fine grained) we just cooked it in the oven under foil like any other meat... as long as you avoid the ventricles and septum it is great stuff... met OH in 1980 and she refuses to even countenance it... 

Can't be much left if you avoid the ventricles and septum!!!

I quite fancy trying heart. Perhaps braised lambs heart. We dissect them alot with the kids at work. We also do lungs, kidneys, liver and sometimes rats. I love braised liver. The rat would be a tad too far!

[Hyacinth]

Yep,frequently when I lived in Italy (where they weren't so fussy about eating offal)...cut out the tube-y bits, stuffed with sage & onion & braised.

Lovely it was. If I could find some locally, I'd be doing it again.

[gordonsveg]

Lovely roasted or in a casserole,just trim off the fat and tubes.

[Ishard]

Hyacynth most supermarkets now sell lamb hearts, we have them often. YUM!

[Hyacinth]

I'd been thinking about this...cooking offal & so on, and peeps' reaction to it... Concluded that when I learned to cook, back in the 60s in Italy, meat, in fact all protein, but especially meat, was v. expensive and therefore everything was used and there was no "offal! disgusting!" reaction - it was a normal part of eating. For instance,  the piglet bought between a consortium of neighbours was fattened by all their scraps, the slaughter was done, the animal butchered, then the women went to work saving the blood for sausages, cooking the trotters, tongues and all the other parts of the animal...they used to say that all they threw away was the grunt

So I had easy access to fresh offal BUT the recipe I found for stuffing/braising was straight out of my first ever English cookbook - Marguerite Patten's Everyday Cookbook. She was advisor (or something) to the Govt during/just after the war, is now 93 I reckon, and I heard her talk on the radio just last year. Remarkable woman. (and it was a brill recipe for braised hearts )

[lewic]

Ewww! Reminds me of school dinners at my rural primary school c.1972. Every day a different stomach-turning menu. I think our school just boiled everything up with dumplings and some MSG, but you might find some tastier more creative Greek recipes online, they are very into offal.

[Jeannine]

Yes I eat it .I  remove all the icky bits then mince or chop it fine and cook slowly just as you would do with mincemeat, or chunk it for a stew, hamburgers etc or again minced use it as the meat ingredient in a soup,it is  actually very good but cook it slowly. It no doubt will start to get popular if it is starting to show up again so te price will go up and up. I love tongue and it has sky rocketed. XX Jeannine

[PurpleHeather]

It was huge as I say it weighed 5lb when I cut off all the bits which were tube like, and I did not cut it up frugally, I was left with over half of it which did not look one little bit like a heart.

Over 2lb of pure protein is now in the freezer since the stew I made for the dog is enough for several days.

I think that he does like raw meat and I have given him trimmings before from steak and such but I remember being told that feeding dogs raw meat makes them vicious, probably an old wives tale.

We have only got the dog since we retired. I would never leave one all day whilst we were working.

It seems that butchers do not display offal, the one I get it from has a stall in the market with  two parts to it. One part has all the posh meats like steak and chops and the other part has offal, pigs heads, trotters, tails, skin for doing your own crackling.  It is all very cheap. It was the first time I had seen the Ox heart on his stall and was amazed how big and cheap they are. £2 for 5lb of meat is 40p a pound that is rediculously cheap. Even if after you cut off the icky bits it is still well under £1 a pound. None of us knows what rubbish goes into burgers sausages or even mince. Especially if we buy them to eat in a cheap cafe or pub.

I have seen some recipes for it and may try it but I know I wont eat it (silly me) OH will his whole family love offal of all kinds and he adored a meal of liver and kidneys which was on an Indian restaurant menu. He even had tripe in Spain and Snails in France. He did not try the fried bugs in Thailand but he did eat the black eggs.  He keeps telling me to cook it for him.

Hyacinth, do ask at the butchers if they have Ox hearts because I ask them for offal and they all have it but it seems we Brits are so fussy, we wont even buy from a shop where we see it displayed  so they keep it out the back.

I wish I could eat that sort of thing but my limit is steak and kidney pie.

[shirlton]

Dont feed your dog too much of the heart cos its very rich.

[tomatoada]

I use to cook Ox heart in the 50s and 60s.  I put stuffing in it and cooked it slowly for hours on a low heat in one of those oval enamel pots.  Then sliced of the lean meat.  It was lovely.  There was enough for 6 for 2 days.  Too much for me now.

[Jeannine]

It is an old wives tale re the raw meat for dogs. The dogs in the queens kennells get raw uncleaned tripe


XX Jeannine

[Hyacinth]

It is an old wives tale re the raw meat for dogs. The dogs in the queens kennells get raw uncleaned tripe


XX Jeannine

My cat used to as well...that off-white honeycomb stuff ( not the pappy bleached white stuff which is all I can find round here). I remember when OH was in hospital & I was there every day, coming back late at night, and had run out of meat for me, tho lots of kitty-tripe in the freezer? Reckoned that the Italians would have some delicious recipes for it - and I was right! Found one using o-oil, garlic, chillies, white wine & peas. B. lovely it was!

OK then, all this talk about ox heart & 'proper' tripe, now that the snow has gone, means I can get to the Bull Ring market and load up on both, hopefully Friday. Let's see if I can match your price, PH

Thanks for the thread.

[grawrc]

I think the BSE epidemic was the kiss of death for offal. People stopped eating it and butchers stopped selling it. Or at least you had to ask.