Organ meats

[mommysunshine]

Hi,

Liver and other organ meats are out of fashion these days. It seems people aren't interested in them anymore as well as other nourishing foods like butter, lard, cream and egg yolks.

I"m looking for feedback from people that grew up in a time that wasn't afraid to eat them and had them often. How often was typical?

I can get 100% grass-fed beef liver, heart and kidney for 1/3 the price I'm paying for muscle meat so I'm very interested in using them more in my cooking.

Thanks,

Julia

 

[D Bergy]

I am not a big fan of organ meat either, but mostly because I do not like the taste.

My grandparents were farmers, so the answer to the question of how often they ate organ meat is pretty straight forward. When you butcher an animal, that is when you have organ meat available.

So, if you butcher a beef cow, you have those organs to eat, and all of the meat. So basically until that cow was consumed you would not have any more organ meat until the next one was slaughtered.

That determined how much they ate more than anything else.

Dan

 

[Arrowwind09]

I would certainly eat it. I like liver if its got enough onions and bacon with it.
I had Elk liver this fall.
The other stuff I'd rather have in sausage.
Go for it. Eat frequently.

 

[jfh]

I can't stand the stuff. I can barely stand the thoughts of the stuff. My grandmother would eat such things as brains and eggs. She would also eat cows tongue. The southern folk, as I was growing up, would have chitlin' festivals (chitterlings - fried pigs intestines). My mother made the best giblet gravy, but I would filter out the organs.

I can't imagine eating the body's toxin filter, the liver. Might as well take a deep breath of used furnace filter.

 

[Arrowwind09]

The toxins found in the liver of grass fed beef would be minimal.. The liver flushes with blood so frequently and is responsible for maintianing homeostasis for all the body, which of course includes itself. Most cattle are 1.5 to 3 years old when taken to slaughter, still very young and haven't had the time to build up a huge amount of toxins like us old folks.... it has many nutrients that other body parts don't have. Anything negative that would come with it would be inconsequential and you would filter it out yourself.

I would not eat animal brains due to concerns about some of the neuro diseases they can carry... not to likely you would come upon it but you never know..

Chitlans are kinda gross and smell terrible.

 

[Thrasymachus]

Modern factory farms have very horrible, unhygienic conditions that are beyond words. If you lived a mile away from from one of these Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations(CAFO), you would want to move, that is how bad the stench and pollution is. The animals there are in conditions so unsanitary and toxic the only thing keeping them going is unhealthy additives like arsenic(for chickens), massive antibiotics and steroids. Really all the meat most people consume daily is diseased and the carcasses are caked with feces at slaughter. The feces also infests and contaminates the meat as it cut up, as a result the meat industry has resorted to irradiating the meat.

You should really do serious research if you are gonna eat organ meat, and not pretend that under ideal conditions organ meat is healthier, so the organ meat you eat must be healthy. All the slaughter animals of the meat industry have their organs overburdened during their exceedingly short lives, alot of them even live with organ failure.

 

[Arrowwind09]

Generally grass fed beef do not go to those places. They are taken right off the pasture and sent to the slaughter house. Grass fed organ meat is the topic here.

People really need to take control of the meat they eat. Pay a farmer to raise a head for you, grass fed.. oversee its slaughter and butchering... get a neighbor to split it with you. A half or quarter head in the freezer will do most families for the year. This is becoming more and more common and you can probably find someone to do it for you or who already has this happening for folks on Craigs list or KSL.com Quality meat comes out to be under $3 a pound.

 

[Thrasymachus]

I did not see the grass feed part till after making that post, it is still useful info. mommysunshine, said she get grass-fed cost 1/3 less than muscle meat and that does ring alarm bells. Unless it some wholesale price deal, it smells like fish. I don't see how such meat can compare so favorably in price.

 

[Arrowwind09]

As I said, quality grass fed meat is generally under $3 a pound if you have someone raise it for you. Around here standing weight is about a $1 a pound. 40cents a pound to the butcher,, and generally you can get if for about $2 to 2.50 a pound. You have a lot of waste so that accounts for the missing dollar there.

Typically organ meats are cheaper as they are difficult to sell as they have fallen out of custom.

 

[pinballdoctor]

The liver is like the oil filter in your car.

All of the toxins in the blood are filtered by the liver. Its true that grass fed meat is better than factory farmed, however, the liver is still going to be polluted with toxins, and anyone who eats liver will also injest these poisons.

Bacteria, such as E-coli, is associated with the intestines. Thus all animals can become infected.

Plants don't have intestines..

 

[Arrowwind09]

As far as bacteria goes, thats why you cook it and don't eat it raw. Cooking has been a protective agent against bacteria in food for thousands of years and if it weren't we'd all be dead, those of us who eat meat anyway.

Even the dreaded MRSA is in our meat supply but it does not kill us because they irradiate the meat... this one would kill us if they left it only to cooking to get rid of it because it is all over the outside of the meat and they are very worriied about it colonizing in kitchens across America... so we have irradiation... the way to kill bacteria without cooking.


Most ecoli will not make you signficiantly ill. What they forget to mention in all these e-coli food scares is that these bacteria are a mutated variety that our immune system cannot deal with.. they are highly toxic. If your grass fed beef has not been fed antiboitcs or feed with antibiotics it should be a non issue.

 

[D Bergy]

Much of the E-Coli breakouts come from contaminated vegetables that are not normally cooked, such as lettuce and other things that grow near or in the ground. Not too many people eat raw meat, or organs.

Dan

 

[mommysunshine]

Grass-fed beef is $9 a pound. I can get it from Australia for $6 a pound. I live in California. Getting an extra freezer and buying a half a beef from Craig's list may be in order.

There is an author named Aajonus Vanderplanick who had stomach cancer and had surgery that permanently destroyed some of his digestive ablities. The doctors told him that he could easily get bacterial and parasite infections because of it. After years of depression he tried to end his life by eating RAW meat. He felt so good from it that he began to eat it all the time. His info. is here: https://www.wewant2live.com/site/811618/page/45030

I'm not saying we should eat raw meat but some people do and they aren't dying from parasites or bacterial infections like we are told will happen if we do.

 

[Arrowwind09]

If your meat is of quality you should be able to eat raw meat. The nutriton to it is superior. But you better butcher it yourself as who can say what goes on at the local butchers.


But with MRSA and the varieties of e-coli out there in our meat supply these days I would not recommend it.

The e-coli found in veggies that makes people ill is from farm animal waste... it is a mutated variety.

Having been a pediatric nurse I can't tell you how many times I have found kids eating poop... they did not get sick, they did not die.. It was becasue it was a normal e-coli strain that the body, especially the digestive tract is accustomed to.
If it were the other variety they would have been dead in short order.

 

[pinballdoctor]

Having been a pediatric nurse I can't tell you how many times I have found kids eating poop..

Poop or hospital food...

Tough choice.

 

[EarlyBird]

I love baby beef liver & lots of onions; used to eat it 2 to 3 times a month.
I also liked chicken livers but don't buy them anymore either.
I used to also buy beef tongue occasionally - make great sandwiches.
Never had pork liver, nor pigs feet, nor heart of any animals except chickens.
I think some organ meat can be very good for you if you can find them untainted. :roll: