You know.... the nasty bits.
I already told you how to get yer liver on by making paleo beef-liver pate.
Now it's time to figure out the heart.
Mmmm, hearty.
Taking the approach that all offal is best consumed for the first time with bacon, and also realizing that my otherwise awesome wife is not going to eat this stuff even with the bacon, I not only opted for the bacon addition, but I also called a mushroom audible. She doesn't dig the 'shrooms so much, but if she isn't going to eat this particular delicacy anyway, why not add them? So it went something like this....
Ingredients:
--1 (grassfed) beef heart
--garlic (as much as you like)
--1 onion
--2 cups beef broth
--1/4 cup olive oil
--6 to 10 slices of bacon (thick cut if you can)
--8 oz. of fresh mushrooms (don't you dare use canned crap that's floating in some nasty vegetable oil)
Cook the bacon. You then need to cook the mushrooms and onions in a frying pan in either the bacon grease or butter (grassfed, please....Kerrygold is great) along with a bunch of garlic. I opted for the butter route.
Clean the heart by trimming off most of the fat and any obvious arteries from the outside. Then stuff all of the frying-pan ingredients into the heart cavity. Really stuff it full and then use toothpicks -- the longer the better -- to hold it together.
Put the stuffed heart in the crockpot along with the broth and olive oil and some more garlic.
Cook for 11-12 hours on low. Don't skimp on the cooking time, or else you risk ending up with tough rubbery meat. Mine turned out pretty fantastic.
This was my first foray into beef heart. And what does the heart taste like, you ask? Really lean beef. It's so lean, in fact, that I might use coconut milk instead of beef broth/olive oil as the cooking liquid and add chili peppers, cumin or curry along with the garlic in that liquid just to spice things up a little more. The stuffing was *perfect* though. Bacon, mushrooms and onions are a killer combo.
Sliced up after all the cooking and dumped into a pot with lots of the bacon/mushroom/onion goop dumped on top, it looks something like this:
The offal train rolls on....get on board.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I tried this. Oh. My. God. Delicious. I actually cooked the stuffing, stuffed a raw heart, and then froze the whole shebang for cooking later in the month. I forgot to thaw it before hand so it went into the slow cooker frozen.
ReplyDeleteThis is on my permanent rotation now. Even my 5 year old chowed it down. So, thanks so much.
Nice. Glad you liked it.
ReplyDeleteMade this the other day. So good! I'd never eaten beef heart before, so it seemed like as good a place to start as any when deciding where to begin with regard to the half cow I purchased. We made broth using the bones and a recipe the local farmer included with the purchase, and then used the broth in the crockpot heart recipe. Yum!
ReplyDeleteI make this every Christmas Eve. I usually use a moose heart after a successful hunt. I substitue a beef heart for a moose heart. Both are delicious. I slice the heart and serve it with the stuffing after it has cooled.
ReplyDeleteThis recipe looks delicious AND it fits the paleo autoimmune protocol (a rare thing). So, thank you! I recently started a weekly Paleo AIP Recipe Roundtable through my blog, and I would love it if you linked up this recipe. I’m trying to expand resources for the AIP community. Here’s the link: http://www.phoenixhelix.com/2014/02/26/paleo-aip-recipe-roundtable-16/
ReplyDeleteI always make anticuchos with beef heart, I'm going to try this instead!
ReplyDeletethis was absolutely delicious. i cooked mine for 12 hours and it sliced beautifully!! i loved the flavorful sauce!
ReplyDeleteMy first time cooking beef heart and this was awesome! Cooked it for 12 hours and it turned out perfect. Loved the texture and flavours! Thanks for the recipe :)
ReplyDeleteI don't have a crock pot per se - do you think the Instant Pot Slow Cooker is low enough to work on this recipe? I always think it hotter than my old slow cooker was.
ReplyDeleteHonest answer? I don't know. I was intrigued by the Instant Pot as a substitute slow cooker for awhile. But I wonder if it really would do the job on something like a heart which, if under-slowcooked, can really be chewy and tough. Sorry for the glacially slow answer, by the way. I was on a very long break from this blog.
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