Offal Good

November 20, 2007 4:24 PM

Offal Goodis a blog dedicated to helping you get more dining experience out of your animal. Most people stop at the skeletal muscle cuts, but there's a world of tripey goodness, not to mention snouts, feet, etc. Videos, recipes, photogalleries & more.
posted by jonson (24 comments total)

I grew up in Alabama, and used to spend summers with relatives in South Carolina, and down there pickled pig's feet were often on display, for sale from big jars often located at the checkout counter of small grocery stores. I guess they were the "impulse buy" type of item at the checkout, sort of like breath mints, or the National Enquirer.

There was one summer where me and my cousins got into a little of the ol' phone pranking. We used to call grocery stores and ask: "do you have pig's feet?" "Yes." "Well, put on some shoes and nobody'll notice!"

Hey, we were 8 years old. We thought we were damn funny...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:35 PM on November 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

For all you San Franciscans, the place to go for gourmet offal is Incanto.

Another sample menu.
posted by vacapinta at 4:46 PM on November 20, 2007

It's odd that I keep running into mentions of Chris Cosentino online, but my friends here in San Francisco have never heard of him. Even the ones who I'd consider to fairly well-informed on local restaurants.

I can't look at stuff like this without thinking of the people I know with gout who can't eat it. I always thought it was some weird 18th century disease, but it turns out to be surprisingly common still. Who know?
posted by cali at 4:46 PM on November 20, 2007

Ah, that blog is from Chris Cosentino from Iron Chef and the Next Iron Chef.
posted by ericb at 4:47 PM on November 20, 2007

In case it wasn't clear, Cosentino, who writes that blog, is executive chef at Incanto.
posted by vacapinta at 4:49 PM on November 20, 2007

And then there's British chef Fergus Henderson, his restaurant St. John and his cookbook The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating.
posted by ericb at 4:50 PM on November 20, 2007

Even the ones who I'd consider to fairly well-informed on local restaurants.

i dont know... I see him on every other chowhound post.

He also runs the Boccalone Salumi Society, of which I am a proud member.
posted by vacapinta at 4:53 PM on November 20, 2007

And let's not forget head cheese!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:54 PM on November 20, 2007

This is also a metaphor for a good FPP. Stuff that others might overlook, well presented, can be tasty, or at least interesting. Another good find, jonson.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 5:02 PM on November 20, 2007

When I was in Mongolia the Mongolians tried to feed me tripe for breakfast . I grew up vegetarian and since I started eating meat I've been pretty open-minded about eating just about anything. However, guts are where I draw the line:

DO NOT WANT.
posted by mullingitover at 5:05 PM on November 20, 2007

I find it amusing that there's a restaurant in San Francisco that serves what I'd call "poor people's food" as an exotic, gourmet experience - 3rd worldish country background over here.

Anyway, all this makes me suspect that the chicken livers I buy for a dollar a pound at the grocery store in SF weren't supposed to be made into a yummy risotto...
posted by lucia__is__dada at 5:05 PM on November 20, 2007

By coincidence, I had lamb's kidneys tonight. Which got me to thinking; before the industrialisation of food, shouldn't this stuff have been a delicacy? After all, you've got to kill a lot of lambs to get a couple of hundred grams of kidney.
posted by Leon at 5:20 PM on November 20, 2007

Eating raw guts!!!
(Note: some bloody raw guts in this YT clip. Being eaten.)
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:27 PM on November 20, 2007

You know, I hate the texture of tripe. I always had. When my (Peruvian) mom would make Caucau of tripe, I never wanted any of it.

But the flavor of Menudo and Pho with tripe is hard to resist.

On the other hand, bull testicles are fucking delicious.
posted by LMGM at 5:46 PM on November 20, 2007

My friend Jeffski was surprised by the almost silky texture of pickled tongue. I was disappointed by the lack of noticeable pickling in the flavor -- the Russian dressing and raw onion on my sandwich must've overwhelmed it.
posted by pax digita at 5:50 PM on November 20, 2007

For anyone who may have missed the Sue Townsend reference.
posted by Smart Dalek at 6:26 PM on November 20, 2007

Wow, candied cockcombs. That's one of the weirder foods I've seen.
posted by painquale at 6:30 PM on November 20, 2007

Leopold Bloom to the white courtesy telephone, please
posted by growabrain at 6:38 PM on November 20, 2007

The only bad thing about my Thanksgiving plans this year is that I won't be given the kidneys and neck. Oh are those a treat for me and my mostly-vegetarianness. I still haven't tried most of the beefparts I can get at my local taquerias, but with farmed meat the ecological energy sink that it is, I probably won't. But I will take those spare giblets off yer hands.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 7:24 PM on November 20, 2007

I've got two supermarkets on my block, one Polish and the other Latino. Both have *tons* of offalicious foodstuffs but I've never known what the hell I was supposed to do with it. Next time I go to Eagle Provisions or El Nuevo Faro Associated, I promise to pick up a few snouts 'n' hoofs.
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches at 7:34 PM on November 20, 2007

It's kind of disrespectful to animals not to eat the whole beast. It's like killing a buffalo and cutting out the tongue and leaving the rest to rot. If your going to kill, show the animal some respect by using it. Hunters and fisherman understand this, society has lost touch with it. Or it's a sign of affluence, like the hunters shooting buffalo from the train.
posted by stbalbach at 9:39 PM on November 20, 2007

The young me would gag and quiver in disgust thinking about some of the wobbly bits of animal entrails I sometimes eat and enjoy these days. Koreans believe in using every last bit of the animal (at least in part because of decades of postwar poverty and frugality, and the rural background of the majority of people over 40 or 50 years old), and thanks to the aging population, there's a big gourmet-nostalgia market for the stuff that people had to unwillingly choke down when they were kids here in the '50s and '60s. The ironic thing is that you end up paying a surprising premium for the meaty gutstuff that, in most of the rest of the developed world, gets thrown away as waste or disguised and processed into hot dogs and dog food.

Which makes me wonder what Korean hot dogs are made of.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:59 PM on November 20, 2007

You know, I just had a brilliant idea to capitalize on the growth of fast food culture in Korea, and the (shhh, don't tell the rest of the world) abiding love for dog meat, particularly among the 40+ male contingent, who think it makes their weiners hard.

Hot dogs, made of dog meat! Weiners for your weiner! Dog hot dogs! Crikey, they're even shaped like penii -- put a knob on one end and you're golden. Cartoon pooches on the packages, all a-grin, butcher knife aloft ready to carve off a tasty slice for ajeossis hungry and horny after a hard night's soju swilling.

I'm a goddamn genius, I am.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:07 PM on November 20, 2007

Hot dogs, made of dog meat! Weiners for your weiner! Dog hot dogs! Crikey, they're even shaped like penii -- put a knob on one end and you're golden.

So these two guys are visiting the US for the first time and decide to do everything the americans do. Right off they spot a hot dog stand and both get hot dogs. One guy looks in his bun and says to the other "So, what part of the dog did you get?"
posted by 445supermag at 7:59 AM on November 21, 2007