All We Want To Do Is Eat Your Brains

August 24, 2017 11:26 AM

A Bloomberg report on how offal is re-entering mainstream US cuisine
posted by Copronymus (48 comments total)

That's not unreasonable.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:30 AM on August 24, 2017 [16 favorites]

Mainstream US cuisine has always been offal.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:31 AM on August 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Creutzfeldt-Jakob says what?

I'll take my dinner without prions, thanks.

The X-Files saves lives people.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:32 AM on August 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

I dunno man, tripe and tendon in my pho is about my adventure limits. I'm a kinda-fan of Bourdain who loves him some offal but, geeshk.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 11:35 AM on August 24, 2017

Man, brains are really like the only thing that still bothers me at a visceral level. The only part of butchering I really could not bring myself to do was scoop the brains out of the skull. Even having a dead pig's lidless eyes staring blankly out was less bothersome than that.
posted by backseatpilot at 11:36 AM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

This article reads like it was originally written as "wow, offal is trending! how exciting!" and then someone pointed out that this trend is actually like 10-15 years old so the first few paragraphs were written to tone it down.

I had a crispy pigs-ear salad and a beef heart once at St. John. Both delicious.

I'm as big a prion paranoiac as anyone, but if the cow has mad cow and is slaughtered, all the flesh is at risk of contamination, so I'm not sure avoiding brains really helps. The cholesterol in them is astounding, though--just look at the label on a can of brains sometime.
posted by praemunire at 11:43 AM on August 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

I will not even eat liver in any form,.not even chopped. hated it as a child and hate it still. So...no brain sandwich for me. Does this have anything to do with the strange fascination with Zombie movies?
posted by mermayd at 11:44 AM on August 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

80% of the reason I'm a vegetarian is to have an easy and polite way to nope out of offal and tubular cured meats. It is kind of a bummer now that American hipster cuisine has moved into the meatatarian zone, though. I can't go to most of the cool new restaurants because I still don't want to consume bone marrow :(
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:45 AM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

I grew up eating Rose's canned pork brains with my scrambled eggs. They were terrible - the texture alone was disgusting.
posted by Vhanudux at 11:45 AM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I will not even eat liver in any form
Not even dirty rice or boudin or liverwurst or scrapple or fois gras? I mean raw liver is a bit . . . different looking, so I can see not wanting liver and onions for dinner.
I remember watching some cooking show about fast food sandwiches that alleged fried brains sandwiches were a thing somewhere, St. Louis? Never seen them in real life though.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:59 AM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

No. Just no. Not even a little.
posted by tommasz at 12:05 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

mermayd, the way my mom served liver as a child, it was disgusting. I couldn't stand it. But I love foie gras and some of the other items Bee'sWing mentioned. They are quite different experiences. So if it's a childhood repulsion, you might find more sophisticated preparations a lot more to your taste. (For one thing, they don't taste overwhelmingly of iron!) Not that you have to or anything, but if I'd never tried other forms, I'd have missed out on a lot of deliciousness.
posted by praemunire at 12:21 PM on August 24, 2017

Everyone.
Duck hearts. DUCK HEARTS!

Wait, I know, I know, but hear me out. You roll into the asian market near your house, and you can get a little styro-pack of *mumble*hundred duckhearts for like 3 bucks. This is enough duck hearts to feed the neighborhood.

Stoke the hottest grill you have access too (them just seared over the charcoal chimney works great), grill them up super hot, and super fast, just get some color on them. Baste with some soy sauce and mirin. Serve on a stick. Drink with a shitty lager. Freak out because your life just got tastier. They taste like little, yummy, kinda gamey, kinda sweet steaks. If you like steak, you like properly cooked duck hearts.
posted by furnace.heart at 12:22 PM on August 24, 2017 [14 favorites]

I will not even eat liver in any form

Have you tried pre-soaking it in a bath of milk? It's amazing how much it reduces the liveriness.

Would you eat it soaked in milk?
Would you eat it wearing silk?
Would you like it in a house?
Would you like it with a mouse?
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:24 PM on August 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

Personally, I'll eat anything a local I like and trust says is great. That doesn't mean I'll eat anything in any circumstance. They have to say it's really great. My spouse is Romanian and they eat ciorba de burta (tripe soup). I was game, but when I asked Romanians, over and over again, they would just shrug and say some variation of "Yeah, we eat that... it's okay." Had they managed real enthusiasm, I'm positive I would have tried it. But I'm not ladling myself up a bowl of spongey stomach lining soup if it's just "okay."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:27 PM on August 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

Somewhere, my grandpa is chuckling in amusement. That man loved him some fried chicken gizzards.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:29 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Any time we make poultry that comes with giblets, everything but the neck gets consumed with gusto by our dog. She also gets homemade liver treats on the reg (which stink our home up to high heaven every time I work myself up to making them). I like to think she's just a foodie who also licks her butt from time to time.
posted by DingoMutt at 12:31 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I try to be moderately adventurous in my eating, but I still have a hard time with a lot of these. Some of it is texture (took me a loooong time to like pork belly because of the fattiness) but some if it is that so far all the "unusual" and trendy things I've tried have just been ok. Like roasted bone marrow - we were at a Michelin star place for brunch and while it was very tasty, I'd rather just have a really great butter than have to go through all the fuss with the little spoon and the scraping. I generally feel the same way about veal and foie gras. I'm starting to think I just really like relatively plain foods.
posted by brilliantine at 12:33 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

i adore offal of all kinds, and am overjoyed in this recent trend.
posted by PinkMoose at 12:35 PM on August 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

A related previously, from me: What's So Offal About "Unmentionable Cuisine"? I FINALLY found a copy of "Unmentionable Cuisine" a few months ago, and it is as delightful as I thought it would be.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:35 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Tripe is gross.
Long, long ago, doing summer volunteer work in Mapuche communities in southern Chile, we were given a load of food by the same government agency that gives out food to public schools all over Chile. We had big ass boxes of mashed potatoes, cans of fish, etc. The quality was less than stellar, but we were good sports, and I managed to cook sort of mackerel shepherd's pie for 50 people in a wood burning oven, and they liked it, which I basically consider one of my life's greatest accomplishments.
There was, however, a huge, 20Kg can of tripe. We openned it, and it just looked and smelled so bad, there was no way we were going to even try to make it edible.
There was a pack of semi-feral dogs that hung around the school we where staying at. Hardcore dogs, big, mean, hungry, country dogs from one of the poorest rural areas in Chile.
We gave them the tripe.
They took one sniff and turned tail and basically ran away, it was that bad.
Brains, liver, testicles, udders, still body-warm blood? Been there, ate that. Tripe? No farking way.
posted by signal at 12:41 PM on August 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Stoke the hottest grill you have access too (them just seared over the charcoal chimney works great), grill them up super hot, and super fast, just get some color on them. Baste with some soy sauce and mirin. Serve on a stick. Drink with a shitty lager. Freak out because your life just got tastier. They taste like little, yummy, kinda gamey, kinda sweet steaks. If you like steak, you like properly cooked duck hearts.
posted by furnace.heart at 3:22 PM on August 24

Are we still doing "eponysterical"?
posted by Navelgazer at 12:41 PM on August 24, 2017 [12 favorites]

And here I was hoping they were bringing meat pies into the mainstream.
posted by Talez at 12:46 PM on August 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

Strictly speaking, if you eat sausage with a natural casing you're eating offal in the form of animal intestines.
posted by SteveInMaine at 12:58 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Real Jewish chopped (chicken) liver is a tasty treat.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:03 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Strictly speaking, there ought to be a form you sign the first time you eat a hot dog, which formally revokes your right to ever say "ew" about eating any part of any formerly living thing ever again.
posted by Wolfdog at 1:03 PM on August 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

I will not even eat liver in any form,.not even chopped. hated it as a child and hate it still.

My grandmother was... Let's not speak ill of the dead. She did make the very best liver dumpling soup ever created - and I hate liver.

Duck hearts. DUCK HEARTS!

Hearts in general are yummy. Best part about hunting is fresh heart fried up with some mushrooms and onions after cleaning and hanging the kill. My dad likes to also fry up the lungs, but I never could get past the texture. Whats funny about heart meat is that it all tastes vaguely the same, no matter the species.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:07 PM on August 24, 2017

Not even dirty rice or boudin or liverwurst or scrapple or fois gras?

No, no, no, hell no, and absolutely-not-ever-now-get-out-of-here-with-that.

I remember watching some cooking show about fast food sandwiches that alleged fried brains sandwiches were a thing somewhere, St. Louis?

I've lived in St. Louis since 1996 and have never heard of that until now. According to the internet, it used to be more of a thing and only one or two places still serve them.
posted by Foosnark at 1:09 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I guess I am more of an offal eater than I realized after reading this thread. Brain is about the only thing mentioned so far that doesn't sound all that appealing.
posted by briank at 1:11 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Strictly speaking, there ought to be a form you sign the first time you eat a hot dog, which formally revokes your right to ever say "ew" about eating any part of any formerly living thing ever again.

Eh, hot dogs - especially grocery store packs - are some of the most benign sausages you can eat. They don't even normally use natural casings, they either have cellulose casings or plastic that the meat is formed in and then stripped off before packaging. But that's all muscle meat in there, simply trimmings or "mechanically separated" or whatever else isn't turned in to steaks.

Now if you want some sausage cred, you want to start with something like boudin noir or other blood sausages. Parts of Asia make some really serious tubesteaks full of tripe and other innards. Or you could try something like mumm which is full of offal, stuffed in to a stomach, and then fermented in the Laotian sun.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:12 PM on August 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

The first time I bit into a kidney, in a pie in a pub, a long time ago, I thought 'oh, so that's what makes sausages taste so good.' Been a fan ever since. Only had tripe in manudo or pho, it looks kind of weird, meat made by bees, but it is bland and uninteresting. Not like beef tongue, which looks pretty gross but tastes yummy.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:53 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

For those of us who grew up in Amish country it never left.
posted by lagomorphius at 2:28 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Not even dirty rice or boudin or liverwurst or scrapple or fois gras? "
Nope, would not eat any of those. My mom loved liverwurst, I would not touch it. My Polish grandpa ate all manner of gross things like pig's feet and head cheese, not me. My mom tried to make liver tasty by frying it with onions, and it smelled great but still tasted like liver.

My Jewish husband agrees with me about liver in all its forms and I do not think my kids have ever eaten it. All of us eat lots of other ethnic foods from all over and enjoy them, we are not fussy eaters, but liver is not on our menu. Organ meat is one of the few things I do not want to eat, but I do eat sausages, my grandma used to make her own kielbasi.

Fois gras...The idea of force feeding a goose to produce this is repulsive, and in the end it is just another kind if liver. There is no way to make liver taste good to me.
posted by mermayd at 3:48 PM on August 24, 2017

Is that what re-entering mainstream cuisine looks like? It looks like it's only in the nascent stages of what happened to say, sushi.
posted by Selena777 at 4:05 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I do not know or care what is in scrapple nor do I give two hoots that it's now "trendy". I presume it is some sort of pig-adjacent product and that's good enough for me. :) About scrapple, I have only two questions. 1. Is it Rapa With Bacon? and (if yes to the first) 2. Can I have some?
posted by which_chick at 4:34 PM on August 24, 2017

Wikipedia says scrapple is "pork trimmings and cornmeal" but the liver in it dominates the flavor. Like Lebanon baloney, it is a Pennsylvania Dutch / northeastern US thing, harder to find as you get farther away. Don't think it has ever been trendy itself.
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:15 PM on August 24, 2017

You don't have to use liver or other organs to make scrapple. Here's a simple, basic version that looks a lot like what I grew up with (minus the weird allspice and clove). Sliced, floured, and pan fried on cold mornings.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:48 PM on August 24, 2017

This is ok by me. I was a vegetarian for 15 years and when I started eating meat again, I vowed to at least try everything. I don't LOVE organ meats but chicken liver and foie gras are some of my favorites. Duck heart is pretty good. I've had some amazing head cheese. I'm not sure I've had brains outside of tacos? I've been wanting to try those deep-fried brains, they look excellent.

One time I got steak tacos that came with a bowl of menudo for some reason, and unexpectedly, the steak tacos were pretty bad but the menudo was life-changingly excellent. It's all how you cook it, I guess.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 6:04 PM on August 24, 2017

Chicken hearts are great when they are cooked right, chewy but not tough and lots of flavor.

Liver is gross -- I don't like the flavor and the texture isn't any better. There are foods that contain liver that are fine, but that's because the taste is hidden or transformed.

Tripe falls into the ok category for me -- not great, but I'll eat it if someone serves it, and once in a while it is really good. I prefer it grilled (like for tacos) rather than in soup, but that's more of a texture thing. However, how well people clean the intestines seems to vary a bit, and sometimes it still has a noticeable funk.

Then there's a whole set of things that I am willing to read about as breakfast foods in old English novels, like kidneys and brains and so on, but I'm not interested in eating them given the choice. I'm a good guest so I'll mostly eat it if you serve it to me, but I definitely don't seek those things out.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:06 PM on August 24, 2017

Offalest meal I ever had was right around this time of year, lunarly speaking, during the Eid al-Adha. I had helped out on the slaughter of a sheep, and in return, this Ghanian uncle invited me to stick around while he prepared the sheep's head. Not the brain: the head. First thing, he charred it over a fire to burn off all the wool. Then he boiled it. Then he roasted it again. Did he boil it again after that? I hazily remember he repeated the steps but it was 25 years ago. Anyway by the time he lifted out the sheeps head, it was still very recognizably what it began as, but now you could just reach out and pull off bits of the face and eat it. Tried it, can't recommend it. Kind slimy and chewy without a lot of flavor. "Waste not, don't want," you might say.
posted by BinGregory at 6:11 PM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've also eaten sheep's head, but the way I was served it was really tasty, especially the cheek meat. (I skipped the tongue and eyeballs, but others were more than happy to take those).
posted by Dip Flash at 6:12 PM on August 24, 2017

My mom loves offal. She grew up eating all the organ meats, so to her they're not "exotic" or "different" in the least.

I think because of this, I've always wanted to eat more organ meats -- it's part of my heritage -- but I don't always like them. I've been told that preparation can make a huge difference, though. I've never liked liver, but I do love chopped liver, and I make a great meatloaf that has chicken livers in it, so I'm still hoping I'll come around. I don't think I'll ever like tripe or brains, though.

Anyway, I'm willing to try anything once. I'd love it if there were a place near me where I could try well-cooked kidney.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 7:16 PM on August 24, 2017

My mother and I fight over the turkey heart at Thanksgiving. The rest of the organs go in the gravy.

My mother wants to eat the turkey heart because she likes the taste.

I want to eat it because I know, from the legend of Sigfrid, that I will gain the power and wisdom of the turkey by devouring it.
posted by mark k at 9:31 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh the joys of being an Asian child. You learn to eat any and everything your mom puts in front of you. And yes, preparation matters. My mom is an excellent cook and, being Chinese, never met an organ meat she didn't like. She genuinely had us kids convinced the following were rare treats (and they kind of were since she didn't prepare them all the time):

-tripe
-chicken hearts
-bone marrow
-pan fried fish roe sacs (truly not for the faint of heart)

And because she's an excellent cook, she prepared them beautifully and they tasted fabulous.

As an adult, I have also tried beef tendon, boudin noir, tongue, kidneys and sweetbreads (also all prepared beautifully). Delicious, delicious, delicious. Never was able to find a place that served brains or I'd have tried them as well. Andouille can be pretty good too, though it's a borderline food for me; sometimes I really like it and sometimes it's a little too gamey. Liver is the same; I generally like pâté but if cooked poorly, liver can be meh.

The one and only variety meat I've tried that immediately repulsed me was a pig's foot. I had one bite and was like NOPE. Not sure why, probably a texture thing. There aren't too many food textures that bother me (I mean hello, I genuinely love tripe and it's pretty squishy), but I had finally found one that was too slimy and oleaginous even for me. Mr hgg still fondly recalls my expression of absolute horror as I took my first bite and realized there was no way I was eating any more of that. *shudder*
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:31 AM on August 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

The Salton Sea put me off brains.
posted by ryanrs at 4:22 AM on August 25, 2017

(also badgers)
posted by ryanrs at 4:31 AM on August 25, 2017

In Japan, horumon and motsu are pig intestines, though I'm not sure of the difference between the two. They're popular dishes, and for years and years I refused to even consider eating them, until one time when some friends had some and offered me a bite, and at first I thought "no way," but then had a green-eggs moment and thought "fine! I'll eat some and they'll stop pestering me about it." And...it was good. Flavor-wise, not that different from meat. I don't think I'll ever seek it out, but I wouldn't refuse it if offered.
posted by zardoz at 5:33 AM on August 25, 2017

In my home ec class in the late 70s all this shit was referred to as "variety meats". I resolved to become a vegetarian as soon as I moved out of my mother's house.

Dear Reader, it took a few more years, but damned if I didn't.
posted by allthinky at 6:08 AM on August 25, 2017