An Intro to Offal

Anthony Bourdain called them The Nasty Bits. Your supermarket's butcher probably calls them leftovers. But to unapologetic carnivores like me, they are proudly, offal.

Pronounced "awful," the word is derived from "off" and "fall" -- meaning the trimmings that fall from a hanging animal that has been disemboweled. It is collectively the organs and glands of a butchered beast that are not muscle (except tongue) or bone. The head (tongue, brains, cheeks, ears), lungs, tail, feet, testicles (fries), heart, kidneys, liver, intestines, pancreas or thyroid (sweetbreads), stomach (tripe), giblets (gizzard, neck, heart and liver of fowl) are all examples of offal. To some they are the never-in-a-million-years-will-I-try-that foods and to others their rich texture and complex flavors are a delicacy worthy of the gods.

Eating offal is not a contest. Not to me at least. I am not trying to gross out or shock onlookers or prove my manhood. I don't eat it because of a dare or a bet. I eat it because it's delicious. It is undeniably the most interesting of all foods -- the nuanced tastes and textures are different than any other cut of meat and the preparation requires more time and skill. Bourdain, in the introduction to the book on offal -- The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, by Fergus Henderson -- put it this way: "Nearly anyone -- after a few tries -- can grill a filet mignon or a sirloin steak. A trained chimp can steam a lobster. But it takes love, and time, and respect for one's ingredients to properly deal with a pig's ear or a kidney. And the rewards are enormous."

There are also philosophical reasons to why I eat variety meats (what offal is often referred to in American butcher shops). It feels good to eat the bits that are usually overlooked. If an animal is born, raised and killed and butchered for the one purpose of eventually arriving on my dinner plate, then I believe I am respecting that animal's life, however short, by appreciating all that it had to offer. It's a more traditional approach to eating meat -- our agrarian ancestors couldn't afford to be wasteful, they knew there was more to a cow than a steak and more to a pig than bacon or ham, and they made use of it. They ate it. And I bet they loved it just like I do. Food was better when it was simpler, before the prepackaged, boneless-skinless chicken breasts and before the frozen burger patty days that I grew up in. It's important that we get back to a simpler, more mindful way of eating, especially concerning our livestock. I'm doing my part, I'm eating offal.