How do you feel about eating organs?

Diddy

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I’ve started watching Paul Hollwood’s City Bakes on youtube and enjoying it. Just got to one episode where he visits Palermo and goes on about what an adventure it feels like, and how he wants to eat authentic food.

He gets taken (presumably knowingly) to a local place that serves organs and offal, and they prepare some (I think) beef tongue and tripe with various sauces etc, and he turns it down, totally undermining everything he said and being sort of rude I think.

ANYWAY, in the UK I was first a fussy eater and later just unadventurous. But since I moved I ended up in situations too polite to decline where I’ve tried all sorts of stuff in this bracket - intestine hotpot, deep fried chicken cartilage, beef tongue, horse heart sashimi and so on, and mostly I’ve been alright.

getting to my question, I thought British were generally averse to that sort of meat (maybe aside from older generations). Is my feeling just based on my personal experience or is that a fair appraisal?

how do you feel about stuff like that?
 
Waste not want not ! If
I’ll try anything once. I’ve had heart a few times in one of those places they bring meat around on skewers until you want to explode. Was nice ! Kidneys are okay, had in risotto a few times I think. Can’t think of any other offal experiences.
 
One of the nicest things I’ve ever eaten in that bracket was deep fried deer tongue at River Cottage. I do think if you're going to eat meat you should eat as much of the animal as possible, especially in today world. Sadly we're pretty fucking precious in the UK now, and most people just want homogenous chicken breast. The UK exports most of its offal to the East.
 
I still can’t really get on board with Kidney & Liver though, something about the texture just makes it a bit grim for me
 
Liver, cooked properly, is really nice. Kidney is OK as long as you don't think too much about it being the piss processing plant.
 
The UK's relationship with meat is pretty strange tbh. Some of the best/nicest cuts of meat are the cheapest. We don't eat a lot of meat now but when we do we buy things like organic chicken thigh - so much more flavour. Same goes with beef, a slow cooked ragu made with beef shin absolutely smashes bland mince out of the park.
 
Liver was a staple of mine at uni as it's so cheap and I love it. I also came out of my mummy's tummy as she was eating liver apparently. :)

Not fond on steak and kidney only because I'd rather steak and steak.

Think that's the only offal I've ever eaten. I'll try anything once. I'm not squeamish when it comes to food at all (but will draw the line at anything LIVE thanks!)
 
Does the UK’s weird meat stuff happen in other European countries?

I wonder why we are like that, it must be a relatively recent thing, my parents are in their 70s and always go on about how they used to eat all sorts when they were young.

Is it a class thing? Like if you’re well off, you can get the expensive cuts, and by extension anything cheap is horrid because poor people are horrid? Now hardly anyone eats them so we associate it with barbaric foreign savages who eat anything?
 
I am a chicken-livered little shit when it comes to meat. Even thigh is a little much for me sometimes, so I am going nowhere near anything like a tongue or a colon.

Haggis is the only exception to that, and I think it is because I first ate it before I knew what it was.
 
Even thigh is a little much for me sometimes, so I am going nowhere near anything like a tongue or a colon.

poor @COB

I’ve never tried haggis, but as a weird coincidence, my friend took me to a British(-inspired) bar chain (that I’d been to many times but too polite to say). The British food menu was an impressive variety of food from any country besides the UK :D ooh do you want some Pizza? Nachos? Sauerkraut? Buffalo wings? But at the end there was Haggis! It was a hard pass from my friend when I explained it, and I thought that place wasn’t the best place to try it for the first time
 
I’ll avoid but will eat in situations where polite. I’ve had tongue and heart which don’t bother me so much as they’re just muscles like any other meat, the best heart I had was an ox heart pastrami. I’ve also eaten trotters which were lovely. I have no problem with pate, but liver not blended to a pulp does not appeal to me. I’ve drawn the line at SWEETBREADS though.
 
Before I turned vegetarian many moons ago, I did enjoy liver. As long as there weren’t any TUBES.
 
Does the UK’s weird meat stuff happen in other European countries?

I wonder why we are like that, it must be a relatively recent thing, my parents are in their 70s and always go on about how they used to eat all sorts when they were young.

Is it a class thing? Like if you’re well off, you can get the expensive cuts, and by extension anything cheap is horrid because poor people are horrid? Now hardly anyone eats them so we associate it with barbaric foreign savages who eat anything?
I think the CJD/BSE scare didn’t help. I seem to recall they actually banned the sale of offal ?
 
We used to feed our old dog cow's liver, so I've always had this belief that it was pet food rather than human food. Plus the smell of mum cooking it in bulk every few weeks and then mixing it up with whatever else was quite grim.

I think you're right about the older generations (and definitely working class) being less averse to it. I can remember my gran cooking heart, liver, tongue, brain, tail, trotters, whatever.

I think in the 70s/80s we moved on to consuming our animal eyeballs and arseholes in reconstituted meat products and managed to kid ourselves that wasn't really what we were eating.
 
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One of the worst things about giving up pork has been missing black pudding. I probably liked that more than bacon. I've seen a vegan one knocking about but can't find it anywhere in shops and online you have to buy it in bulk.

There's a pub/estaurant near me which is amazing and they've been teasing their autumn menu. One of the dishes has home made duck black pudding on it. I'm eating that.
 
Does the UK’s weird meat stuff happen in other European countries?

I wonder why we are like that, it must be a relatively recent thing, my parents are in their 70s and always go on about how they used to eat all sorts when they were young.

Is it a class thing? Like if you’re well off, you can get the expensive cuts, and by extension anything cheap is horrid because poor people are horrid? Now hardly anyone eats them so we associate it with barbaric foreign savages who eat anything?

The French will eat anything, and I don't think the Spanish are that fussy, there's a lot of pork based offal sausages on the supermarket shelves and quite a few traditional peasant dishes that are just beans and offcuts. The italians have a delicacy which is the intestines of veal that has only been fed its mothers milk, contents and all.
 
If you're going to eat meat, I don't see why you'd get squeamish about organs. Having said that, when I did eat meat, I didn't really LIKE things like kidney.

BLACK PUDDING ME UP THOUGH :disco:
 
I'm not really a massive meat eater anyway but +1 for the black pudding fan club. Don't mind liver either, not that I've had it in about 10 years.
 
Now I'm dreaming about Morcilla, spanish black pudding, basically chorizo in a black pudding format, and sobrasada, which is spreadable chorizo. Pesky pigs.
 
Oh I fucking LOVE liver! Chicken in particular or any in pate.
 
And despite this conversation, I’ve just had a “special treat” of Linda McCartney sausages for breakfast. :D :(
 
The worst of meat dodging sausages. The Richmond ones taste exactly like cheap pork if that's your bag.

Nah, I love a Linda- but they’re nothing like actual sausages. I’m not a massive fan of real British style sausages anyway- much prefer chorizo/ black pudding type of stuff. I’ve had the Richmond ones- just wrong.
 
I think if I could only eat one meat product it would definitely be sausages.
 
I don’t miss real sausages or bacon at all and I know they’re the things veggies normally break down over.
 
Add me to the sausage camp too. I’ve two bags of twenty Richmond sausages in the freezer :disco:
 
I've never really understood "bangers". A really good one, ok, that's good, but they're SO rare. They're mostly just gristle tubes.
 
Now I'm dreaming about Morcilla, spanish black pudding, basically chorizo in a black pudding format, and sobrasada, which is spreadable chorizo. Pesky pigs.

Yes to both.

A big fat smear of sobrasada on a plate topped with a poached egg is absolute fucking heaven.

Must go to the Spanish deli on the way home. And they do amazing anchovies.
 
When I was still meat eating, I enjoyed a bit of liver, even knowing what it did. Now, I won't eat anything that was once a bit of an animal.
 
THIS is a local delicacy where I'm from.

WARNING: Not for the faint-hearted.

Cachucha.jpg

I'm not the biggest fan but I will say it tastes BETTER than it LOOKS!
 

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