Bag O Chicken Organs UPDATE recipe and food safety ?

[craft_media_hero]

I scored a free bag of chicken hearts and livers today (12 each!).

Now what?

Dh is very skeptical. I need tasty recipes/ideas where they are not giant whole organs (a chicken heart is bigger than I thought!) and LOOK like hearts and livers. Like hidden hearts/livers! I'm not opposed to splitting them up into hearts in one recipe and livers in another or grinding them--should I just grind it all up and sneak into rice or ground beef or gravy? It must taste good!

Rinsing them gagged me out a little and I had to keep telling myself, "it's just meat, it's just meat" I am still an organ meat newb!
Edited by craft_media_hero - 7/2/12 at 12:30pm

[AdinaL]

Bumping in case anyone has any input for you.  The only thing that comes to mind is something like gravy or sausage...which is probably not helpful. LOL

[artemis33]

For the hearts.....I recently made a batch of creamed chicken over biscuits and was able to 'sneak' in some very finely chopped chicken hearts  :)  I chopped them in little bits about the size of my veggies (I used red peppers, celery, onion,corn, peas...) and also used chicken thighs (dark meat).  I didn't mention they were in there, and no one noticed.  Everyone thought it was delicious and had seconds.

I was thinking that they might also fit in similarly to a chicken veggie fried rice.

For the livers....well, I like them 2 ways.  Either pan fried in bacon grease and served with greens, or turned into a pate (also cooked with bacon and deglazed with a little sherry) and served on crackers.  I still have a bunch in my freezer that I need to use up!  Soaking them for a while in milk before cooking them is supposed to improve the flavor, so I have always done that, too.
 

[craft_media_hero]

So here is my funny follow up and a recipe from my mom:

Last night, I finally had a chance to deal with these little buggers and decided to halve the "hearts" before breading for the recipe my mom gave me. I had given all of it a cursory few rinses when I received the bag of organs, but there still was this weird gritty stuff on the outside if some. I decided to give each piece a good clean hands on rinse before starting cooking. Well, I went to rinse some water into one of the "arteries" and all this yellow gritty stuff backwashed out! BLEHT! I'm pregnant, organ meats are new to me, I about heaved right into the sink So I get a sharp knife and cut along length-wise down the "artery". Well, what spils out but rocks and gritty grain bits!

ZOMG! I am so glad I decided to clean these REALLY well and cut it open before cooking What I thought was a big heart was the gizzard! And the grit was grain stuck in there. BLEEEEEHHHH!

Anyway, I cut open all the gizzards and rinsed the grit out, but I CANNOT eat that after almost puking and the unexpected surprise of finding chicken vom in the "hearts" so I'm going to grind them up and feed them to my cat. He will love me for it.

There were tiny real hearts which I also cut open and rinsed and washed the livers. Seasoned it all and let it marinate in the fridge for a cuople hours. I skipped soaking, so I hope itdoesnt taste bad!

Here is Mamas recipe for "Spanish Rice" (I don't know that it's spanish, but we dont know what else to call it, so there you go),in case someone else searches this forum for chicken liver recipes.

~1# bacon
~1# chicken hearts and livers
~3-4C chopped sweet peppers, hot peppers, and onion
Flour, salt, pepper for breading
~4C cooked (soaked) rice of your choosing
1 large can or jar tomato sauce, chopped tomato, salsa, or other tomato product
Cumin or other spices to taste

Fry bacon til crispy, drain and set aside. Sautee veggies in bacon grease; drain well and set aside. Having soaked and seasoned the organ meat to your satisfaction, shake in baggie of flour or dredge in bowl. Fry meat til crispy (I have read liver i s best just cooked thru, but Mom swears crispy is the key here). Drain and set aside til cool enough to handle.

Crumble bacon and cut fried meat into bite sized pieces. Mom says no more than equal parts liver to bacon, if anything err on the side of more bacon. In good sized cooking pot, begin to heat tomato sauce, folding in meat, bacon, and cooked veggies, followed by rice. Add spices and more tomato product as desired or wetter or drier rice dish.

Enjoy!


Sounds good, no? I only got to the frying the meat stage last night and will cook the rice and finish up the recipe for dinner this evening. It smells good, though!

[craft_media_hero]

Artemis, that pate sounds really good!

I will have double the meat (I cooked it all) I need for the rice recipe, so I maybe will make pate with the rest or hold it back for " cave man chile".

Here's my niggling question of food safety doubt:
I received the bag of organs at about noon, but my kitchen was in the middle of major apricot processing, so I couldnt deal with it right away. I stuck it all in the fridge (still in it's fresh butcher water or whatever liquid it came to me in). About 4 hrs later, I poured it all into my pot that has a seive lid and rinsed with cold water through the seive abt 5-6 times. Then I couldnt get to cooking it until the next evening after I finished the apricots--all of the organs were sitting together in the pot with the gizzards still full of the food grit (I didnt know, obviously, or I would've separated the organ out or found a way to clean the gizzards asap).

Do you think the livers and hearts sitting in the pot in the fridge with the uncleaned gizzards is contaminated? I am just a little paranoid. There were no off colors or smells, and the blood in the pot was red, but there was a little of the grain git kind of dusting the meat in there before I got around to washing it all and cleaning hte gizzards.