Offal

Spare parts for carnivores

When we send out meat boxes and IF I can get the offal back from the abattoir and IF the customer actually wants it, I stick in a “The offal in this box” message.

We can’t always get the offal back from the abattoir. Yes, it’s a mystery to me too. But I know abattoirs and have been in many and while beef offal tends to be hung next to the carcase it came from as it’s shunted down the line, often twitching which can be very disconcerting to the uninitiated, sheep and pig offal is frequently put into containers as it’s removed and then doled out to private kill customers. You want the offal? You brought in fourteen lambs? Here’s fourteen sets of hearts, livers and if you want them the lungs too, they say as they put an arm into today’s offal bin and bring out the requested gore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a committed carnivore, but seeing any foodstuff en masse takes some getting used to, whether it’s endless trays of samosas, lorryloads of oranges or bins of Hannibal Lecter loveliness. And it’s a complete lottery as to whether the offal is yours or from other beasties brought in from the surrounding farms with entirely different farming practices. And you’ll get 12 livers and 16 hearts and so it goes. Yep, it’s infuriating, but if you know any way round this I’d be happy to hear from you.

Beef offal hanging at the abattoir

Anyway, offal. Brits have a very strange attitude towards offal. We’ll happily eat goodness knows what as long as it’s formed into a pink banger served in a white uninspiring bap smothered in ketchup, but faced with sweetbreads, tongue, oxtail, lamb’s liver, etc, noses are turned up and yuck is the response. I just don’t get it. But then the quantity of Haribos, those rubbery artificial stretchy weird sweet things devoured by so many is a mystery to me too. As far as I’m concerned, if sweetbreads are on the menu in a place where the chef knows their onions, it’s food of the gods. The pâté I make from liver is delicious; so simple to make, no nasty additives (apart from a splash of brandy or dry sherry which I’d hardly call nasty) and a world away from the shoe-sole stuff we were served up as school dinners. My almost favourite food is oxtail - I have a LOT of favourite foods – cooked long and slow with vegetables, stock, herbs, with water or beer or stout or wine and cinnamon. The oxtail itself is heaven, and any leftovers gets pummelled into submission and used as the filling for chubby raviolos, as plump as a cushion. The inner skirt from the beef carcase is not called the butcher’s perk for nothing. It resembles the inside of a mackerel of all things and can be chopped and used to make coarse burgers. It can be sliced and made into a stew, or my favourite, flash fried and served like a steak. By all means add caramelised onions and chargrilled ciabatta with smears of horseradish; I mean, who doesn’t love a quality steak sandwich?

Raw cubed beef inner skirt

I’ll admit that I’m not a fan of tripe; we’re all allowed our little peccadilloes, but to dismiss a whole family of natural foodstuffs when you’d happily chomp on a burger, doesn’t make sense. Yesterday I cooked an ox tongue. Three to four hours simmering required. And the joy – perverse perhaps but it was something I really enjoyed doing as a child – of peeling off the skin without damaging the treasure beneath is still something that makes me happy. We always used to tangle over the tip and the back of the tongue. One pretty and neat, the other unctuous and messy. I’ve served it several times in our ploughman’s lunches on courses and had people ask if it’s beef and say how delicious it is. And then I tell them it’s tongue and they say BUT I DON’T LIKE TONGUE. And then, if they’re capable of reflection, and people are, given half a chance, they look at me and say “Actually, I’d never tried it before; it’s lovely”.

Ox tongue on the Aga coming up for a simmer before putting in the oven for 3-4 hours

It makes sense, of course it does, making use of every last bit of a carcase. Environmentally, philosophically and financially. But on top of that there’s the treat factor. That these things are just so good. It’s very rare for me to say to a customer that I’ll add an oxtail into their beef box – you might have twenty customers sharing a carcase of beef, but there’s only one tail after all, impossible to share out, so we tend to keep them. But if someone shows genuine appreciation of the cut and I have a couple of others in the freezer, I’ll oblige to share the love.

Jointed oxtail, full of potential

Liver pate wrapped in our Berkshire streaky bacon, about to go in a bain marie

And why is there a message about offal in our meat boxes? Because apart from kidneys, hearts and livers do not hang with the carcase; they would go off, so they have to be frozen while the carcase hangs. So if your bag of offal is still frozen solid unlike your fresh meat on arrival, all of it is safe to go in the freezer. But if it’s starting to defrost (it never does but better safe than sorry), people need to know it needs to be cooked and eaten. Lucky them.

And before I forget…. steak and kidney pie. Wouldn’t exist without the kidney, would it? Even better with a chunk of marrow bone as the funnel.