Organ Meats.. Poultry.
Before I begin, I must apologize for the lack of posting on this website: I have been very… busy. Hopefully things would come back on schedule soon—time will tell. The next few weeks are going to be some of our family’s most hectic ones of all the summer…details on that later. (If possible)
From the title, you can guess that this would be about chicken livers, hearts, and what not… and you’ll be correct. We butchered our own hens more than two months ago, and I have salvaged roughly ten livers and twelve hears, not to mention bits of stomach muscle that I just had to try. (They’re not that bad, to tell you the truth!!) Disgusting, eh? Well, not that much. We have tried to masticate lamb liver before, without too much success on the enjoying part, but now that I did some research, liver is very good for us!! It has a lot of nutrients, minerals, and things like that. I’m no doctor, so I cannot give you the exact information, but here’s a linkthat I have found helpful:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/323726-nutrition-of-chicken-liver/
I found this list on the Internet as well, for those who are interested…
| Nutrition Facts | |
|---|---|
| For a Serving Size of 100 grams (100g) | |
| Calories 172 | Calories from Fat 57.9 (33.6%) |
| % Daily Value * | |
| Total Fat 6.4g | – |
| Saturated fat 2g | – |
| Monounsaturated fat 1.4g | – |
| Polyunsaturated fat 1.3g | – |
| Trans fat 0.1g | – |
| Cholesterol 564mg | – |
| Sodium 92mg | 4% |
| Potassium 315mg | – |
| Carbohydrates 1.1g | – |
| Net carbs 1.1g | – |
| Sugar 0g | – |
| Fiber 0g | 0% |
| Protein 25.8g | |
| Vitamins and minerals | |
| Vitamin A 4296μg | 478% |
| Vitamin A IU 14378IU | – |
| Vitamin B6 0.8mg | 65% |
| Vitamin B12 21.1μg | 881% |
| Vitamin C 2.7mg | 5% |
| Vitamin E 0.8mg | 6% |
| Vitamin K 0μg | 0% |
| Caffeine 0mg | – |
| Calcium 10mg | 1% |
| Iron 12.9mg | 161% |
| Magnesium 27mg | 8% |
| Phosphorus 442mg | 45% |
| Zinc 4mg | 27% |
| Copper 0.5mg | 27% |
| Manganese 0.4mg | 19% |
| Selenium 88.2μg | 126% |
| Retinol 4293μg | – |
| Lycopene 25μg | – |
| Thiamine 0.3mg | 20% |
| Riboflavin 2.3mg | 137% |
| Niacin 13.9mg | 70% |
| Folate 560μg | 140% |
| Choline 326.8mg | 60% |
| Betaine 21mg | – |
| Water 65.2g | – |
| Fatty acids | |
| Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) 0g | – |
| Total Omega 3 0g | – |
| Total Omega 6 0.7g | – |
| Amino acids | |
| Tryptophan 0.3g | – |
| Threonine 1.1g | – |
| Isoleucine 1.2g | – |
| Leucine 2.2g | – |
| Lysine 2g | – |
| Methionine 0.6g | – |
| Cystine 0.4g | – |
| Phenylalanine 1.2g | – |
| Tyrosine 1g | – |
| Valine 1.5g | – |
| Arginine 1.6g | – |
| Histidine 0.8g | – |
| Alanine 1.5g | – |
| Aspartic acid 2.4g | – |
| Glutamic acid 3.1g | – |
| Glycine 1.3g | – |
| Proline 1.1g | – |
| Serine 1.1g | – |
| Hydroxyproline 0g | – |
| * The Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet, so your values may change depending on your calorie needs. | |
After I cleaned the organs, they were immediately placed into the freezer, and only now did I find the time (and courage?) to open the Ziploc bag and cook them. Oh, I forgot to mention… I saved eleven chicken necks too. They’re bony and almost meatless, but what’s on them is one of my favourite part of chicken meat. The aging hens’ meat tends to be harder to chew than the meat breed of chickens, and their entire body is a lot skinnier… but I saved them any ways. I haven’t begun to taste them yet—we’ll see how that goes.
So this is what I did with my mixture of poultry organs and meat.
*disclaimer: the following is simply a documentation of my first try at processing, cooking, and eating liver and heart meat. I am not saying I did everything right. I totally forgot to soak the meat in water and vinegar at the beginning: I think doing so would lessen the bitter blood taste in the organ meats. I’m not sure…I forgot. JI withheld a few pictures of the process in case some of my readers have queasy stomachs that might not tolerate specific photos safely. Just a word of caution. 🙂 *
I simply boiled the ‘stuff’ in a pot with water until everything was cooked, (drains brown rather than dark pink) then the necks were separated from the organ meats. I then placed about half an onion, some salt, two cloves of garlic, and the hearts, pieces of stomach muscle, and livers into a blender, and pureed them altogether.(the combined meat was only about a cup in total.. not that much.) Afterwards, I added some dried herbs and chicken fat/oil that I previously saved.
It tasted better than I thought!! Although there is still that distinctive taste and texture that only livers and organ meats have… you’ll have to have had liver before in order to understand what I am talking about.:) I think I will have to soak them next time… and ‘next time’ would be lamb livers…I’ll need to find the best recepies to cook our own home-raised,grass fed, organic lamb livers!! If any of you, my readers, have eaten liver or any organ meats before, be sure to share with me in the comment section!! I’m very interested in what you think about this subject, and how you like your organ meats processed and cooked! (Or baked, or steamed, or broiled, or… raw?!!)
God bless you all!!
P.S. This is an experiment at the most… messing around with ideas from non-gaps friendly cookbooks and what produce our family had on hand. Hope you enjoyed the post and the pictures!!
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