Fell in love with ox liver after eating it for just two days!

#1

OK, this is how great my body is at convincing me of what I should eat. Two days ago I purchased my first grassfed ox liver and when I saw the bag which just looked like a bag of blood, I thought ew! But I bought it, brought it home, determined to cook and eat it. I cooked it to perfection I think, very lightly, a nice even brown on the outside but still pink and raw looking on the inside. First bite I took I thought, what!? It’s sweet, it just tastes so weird and the texture is odd, I’m not sure about this at all. But my body gave me the thumbs up. The next day I woke up actually looking forward to having the liver again. So I cooked it, perhaps a bit more, as it was brown both on the outside and on the inside. Hmm, I thought as I stuck my fork into it and took a bite, it actually tastes quite a lot better today. Really works with the eggs! Today when I had my liver, I really really liked it. I also really liked the smell of liver while I was cooking it. I cooked it very lightly, leaving it pink and rawish inside, and guess what? It was perfect, my body went … See? I told you, this is the good stuff! I can’t wait to get my hands on some more, as I intend to eat ox liver every single day, just a small piece at a time. This is what my body does when it really really likes and wants something. It both nudges and convinces me.

What organ meats do you like to eat and from which animals?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

I’m curious: does it have to be ox liver, or can it come from cows and non-castrated bulls as well? What about calf’s liver, which many people feel tastes better than the liver from an adult?

#3

Hi Paul, no, it doesn’t have to be just ox liver, that was just the first organ I tried. But it is whatever I have access to from the grassfed butcher, and what is affordable. The funny thing is I got into organ meats because I wanted to make the switch to eating grassfed and grass finished, and buying organ meats allows me to do this. But I never knew just how incredibly nutritious they are until I looked further into it.

Next time I pay the butcher a visit I’ll be getting the lamb liver to try, and I’ll enquire if they have venison liver as well. But the ox liver is nice, it’s sweet which I didn’t like at first, but now oddly I do. I think this is just my body’s way of convincing me of eating something it immediately liked. I want to try other organs as well such as kidney and heart. But I am still new to this wonderful nutritious world of organs. I watched a video by Dr. Ken Berry regarding the nutrition of organ meats, and I was just blown away, I never knew. But I can tell with how my body feels after eating liver that there must be something to it. I only cook it very lightly now leaving it pink and raw on the inside. Though I will never eat it entirely raw, like Dr. Paul Saladino reccommends.

The only things I disagree with Dr. Ken Berry about is raw milk consumption, and raw honey. I find he has a lot of wisdom to share, but personally I think he’s wrong about honey and milk as he doesn’t differentiate between raw and untreated, and pasteurised.

What organs do you prefer to eat?

(Michael) #4

Favorites are Buffalo heart and veal thymus, along with cow tongue and cheeks. I have enjoyed all organs from eyeballs to testicles. They are all good if you prepare them properly. Sheep spleen is a good choice if you like liver as they are similar tasting.

#5

Hi Michael, I’ll look out for those organ meats. By preparing them properly, how do you mean? I just cook the liver very lightly in butter in my iron pan on very low heat so the outside is nicely browned, but the inside is raw and pink. I suppose different organs have different textures and so require different cooking preparations?

One fond memory I have from my childhood is eating an entire sheep head with my dad, I don’t think I ate the eyeballs that I can remember, but I braved pretty much the rest. I do like the idea of eating an animal nose to tail as I believe it honours the animal. The lapland people uses up everything when they eat their reindeer, including the fur. I believe that is their way of honouring the animal. So they would use not just the organs but the blood and make tasty food from it, like blood sausage and pudding, which I remember eating growing up back in my home country, Norway. We Norwegians are big on eating lamb, our national dish is Faarikaal. It’s a giant pot with stewed lamb and cabbage, I was always ravenous for the lamb I remember, but each dinner was ruined by the large peppercorns that are also traditional to throw in. I’ve always hated pepper since.

#6

Different textures are no problem for me, I fry everything :smiley: Except tongue, that’s traditionally cooked in water flavored by garlic and whatnot and covered by paprika… :slight_smile: So I do that, it’s great that way. But I may try another recipe if it jumps at me, I won’t go out of my way to search for it. Tongue is in head cheese too but I don’t make head cheese and when I bought one with extra tongue, that wasn’t as good as the normal one. Nope, head cheese needs plenty of extra normal meat instead. Even though tongue feels the most normal meat among organs to me…

And tongue is great, the tip is lean and as we go, it gets softer and fattier :smiley: I always eat the fatty part and my SO the lean tip, we both are happier than way!
But I have phases and the extra tongue head cheese put me off for a while… So I eat liver and heart nowadays and that’s about it. I want to try spleen, it looks like something very much edible and I can find it in some places in the city… I can’t buy kidney, for example but I am not into it anyway. I had it from small animals when I bought half or a whole animal and there is no problem with it but it’s meh, bland. And very tiny in the case of small animals.

Blood: I have read about it lately, apparently there are plenty of traditional food with it in various countries. We only fried it and it’s in the blood “sausage” (ours is full with rice or some other grain but I only saw it with rice) but there are lots of dishes elsewhere, North-Europeans even can buy blood pancakes in the supermarket, apparently :smiley:

Try heart, it’s very nice, no acquired taste, it is nice to begin with, nothing strong - of course tastes differ, it’s just what I feel… It’s chewy but I like various textures and I like heart for its chewiness. And nice taste.
Did I tell you about our traditional chicken liver and chicken heart stew? That’s great, you get the strong liver flavor, the liver is soft but you get the more “normal” heart flavor with tiny chewy whole hearts! :smiley: It’s perfect, I like it when the heart is at least as much as the liver. So not 1:1 for pieces, 1:1 for weight! Butchers often/typically sell chicken liver with heart here but that’s too few hearts for me so I buy them separately. I need to go some specific supermarket to find hearts, livers are absolutely everywhere here. It’s still so strange to me that you managed to avoid organs, it was very much impossible for me and I was vegetarian or very close to it for decades :smiley: But organs are a big thing here and not so much in some countries, I am aware…

#7

Hi Shinita, I’m curious now, what is head cheese? Never heard of it. I would love to try all manner of organ meats, but it will be whatever I can afford from the butcher. The lamb liver I’m keen to try. Kidney, heart and tongue also. The ox tongue sounds good but seems to require longer cooking? Could I slow roast/bake it in the oven? Yes, it’s funny how I only got into organ meats because they’re much more affordable, so I can get them grassfed and grass finished, and am now keen to try them all. My SO thought I wouldn’t like it, but my body is very clever, it made me like it in the space of two days. I told my SO how I like to leave my liver cooked brown on the outside, but still pink, raw on the inside, and his reaction was priceless. His mom cooked the liver he ate growing up to second death in the pan before he ate it. My mom can’t bring herself to eat liver, but she used to dry it for hours in the oven when I was growing up to make a tasty snack for our dogs, and they were absolutely mad for it. So I grew up with the smell of liver in the house, but my mom of course cooked the liver to oblivion. I rather like it the way I do it, still pink and raw inside. It doesn’t appear to have done my body harm. According to Dr. Ken Berry there is no evidence of anyone catching vitamin A toxicity from domesticated animals. Perhaps it’s different with livers from wild game? Organs is a whole new world for me which I’m eager to learn more about. But one thing is for sure, if I was to mainly eat organs from here on, I could eat them all 100% grassfed and feed myself like a queen. Though I am a bit concerned still about the potential of getting too much vitamin A so I will be consuming some grassfed muscle meats or minced meats from the butcher too, and of course fresh raw milk, and pasture eggs from the local farm. Do you ever eat fish Shinita? I feel I am eating far too little fish, but there seems to be a concern with murcury in fish, especially the bigger fish such as salmon. But it must still be healthy to eat fish, surely, and that the benefits outweighs the risks. Perhaps I’ll fry up my canned salmon for my last meal today.

#8

You can google head cheese and that shows the variety… But it won’t tell you what is really like… Or can be… It always has paprika here and there is huge differences between cheap and proper ones. I love the ones with lots of meat, not the cheap, mostly skin, tongue and jelly stuff. That’s not proper. At least the cheek meat should be included but some people use extra meat and what a great idea :wink: It is absolutely irresistible when made just right if you ask me but of course, people who really dislike nice, cooked pork skin, they probably dislike head cheese too…?
It’s from the head of the pig, at least here. And extra meat sometimes. Very basic food here, you go into a small village supermarket with any kind of meat counter or fridge and you get it. Just not the super great stuff I got on a farmer’s market once… Oh that was expensive and wonderful and I ate it all up (it wasn’t very much but not very little either but so irresistible!)…

I only ever used the traditional recipe on tongue, I slowly cooked it for 1.5 hours in spicy water (I can’t skip garlic there. I only use garlic for this single meat). And it gets covered on paprika, very basic and I tried without and nope :smiley: But I love paprika even though I almost never use it as I mostly eat roasts and fried meat, usually pork and that only needs a little salt and it’s perfect.

I should try to fry tongue next time… Frying is for everything, surely for tongue as well…? Roasting is… Not for lean meat for me and the tip is lean. But maybe I will try that too.
I ate both pork and beef tongue, they are pretty similar to me except the size :smiley: But it’s not so hard to eat either, eventually :wink: As they are so good! My SO prefers the pork one, I found little difference as I wrote. Maybe pork is a tiny bit more to my liking…? But both are good.

I definitely would be wary to eat 15 times my vitamin A need every day and I couldn’t care less who think otherwise - but I have zero chance for that. I like variety and of course I focus on proper meat most. I just love organs and they are easy and cheap too… I would miss them if I stopped to eat them for 2 weeks or something. And IDK how to eat a lil bite as many people do. 250g liver is little enough when I haven’t eaten it since a week or two!

I talked about fish on the other thread. I would love to try various kinds of fresh fish next to a sea/ocean, it would be so nice… I surely would find lovely things. I probably never would eat much fish unless my circumstances forced me to do it but it would be more than now if I had the opportunity. Even if I wouldn’t be very self-conscious about how much I spend on food, we just don’t have much variety here. Unless one goes to Japanese restaurants, I have found lovely things there, multiple kinds of great tasting, tender raw fishes! I wasn’t into roe but it was nice too. Just not nearly as enjoyable as raw salmon or red tuna or some soft white fish, it’s “butterfish” in Hungarian, IDK what it could be in English… Once I ate an unforgettably wonderful octopus tentacle in Greece, it was just an appetizer (but I used it as main meal between a soup and a dessert), oh so lovely! While my SO enjoyed his super lean, bitter (for me) swordfish! He didn’t feel it bitter. Well, each to their own :wink:
So yes, while I am choosy, I surely love lots of seafood and gladly would eat it regularly, maybe once a week. Or eventually less often? I already don’t eat as much pork and eggs and liver etc. as I wish to! I can’t squeeze in other things regularly!
But sometimes it would be nice.

But whatever supermarkets offer… That’s not good enough. So small variety. And quite expensive. And it’s not as substantial as my normal food. I can’t justify them. I will try out some once in a blue moon and that’s it.

Okay, I wrote down almost everything again but I added new stuff! :wink:

By the way, thanks for this thread :wink: And you being you :slight_smile: I can just think about older times and wonder about things without worrying about derailing some thread about serious scientific stuff or something. I have the carni thread but I already write too much there…

#9

Hi Shinita, as usual I enjoyed your post and musings🙂You have really interesting foods where you live, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stuffed pig’s head in the supermarket. I still remember fondly the sheep head I feasted on back in my home country, Norway.
Today I’ll be visiting the grassfed butcher to get enough organ meats and muscle/minced meats to last me the week. I am all too happy buying the grassfed minced meats, beef and lamb, because they are more affordable, I can get 4 packs of about 500g each, and make my own tasty patties/burgers, and just add my own pink himalayan rock salt. The farm butcher makes their own water buffalo burgers, but I’m sure they’re filled with other ingredients as well, so I’d rather make my own. But I am really keen to try out all their organ meats in time, including organ meats from game. Though I do worry more about getting vitamin A toxicity from eating organs of game like deer and elk as opposed to domesticated animals. According to Dr. Ken Berry there’s never been a documented case of anyone getting vitamin A toxicity from the latter.

It’s funny how much we change on our WOE Shinita. I fasted yesterday because I just didn’t fancy my canned fish and I’d run out of meat. It is perhaps because I fasted that I became more sensitive to things, but when I had my morning coffee I didn’t enjoy it, it left my tongue feeling odd, I drank about half a cup and poured the rest away. Yesterday morning I didn’t fancy the raw honey because it was just too sweet. I am going to try applying it topically on my roseaca though as it seemed to have a soothing effect on the skin. I am developing an aversion to sweetness, though I still am enjoying the taste of my grassfed raw milk. That sweetness is milder, quite lovely. And my pasture eggs have a bit of sweetness in them, and that is fine too. But my hunger is not much these days, I eat my two main meals and they are enough for me. The liver and eggs are so filling I find. Perhaps tongue, tail, kidney and heart would be much less so, I don’t know. It makes me happy to have my house stocked with good wholesome food that will nourish my body, but I actually don’t think much about food at all. Variety and simplicity goes very well in hand, and this WOE feels plenty luxurious because it makes the body feel so good🙂

#10

It’s not that easy to get a pig’s head here either (can’t be very hard but I never saw one just sitting somewhere for sale)… But we have head cheese. It’s just some kind of deli meat :smiley:

Why, do game organs have more Vitamin A…? I only know to avoid polar bear liver but it’s not a valid concern :smiley:
I don’t think you need to worry unless you seriously start to live on liver. I don’t even know about the other organs… I only am careful because I tend to go way above the allegedly proper amount of Vitamin A even when I keep my liver eating to the minimum. My biotin intake is high too but I never worried about that, I eat lots of raw whites anyway. But I suppose one needs a really high amount of these to cause problems, that’s why it almost only happened by eating supplements galore. But if I continuously and seriously overeat Vitamin A for several years, maybe that’s not ideal. I really don’t know but I won’t half-live on liver for safety. That is easy to do :wink:

I can’t even get game liver :frowning:

I doubt I ever will not love my sweet desserts but I definitely changed a lot regarding that and that’s good. And I dislike sweetness in savory dishes but it’s nothing new. I always hated popular things like beef with canned sour cherries, thankfully other sweet meats aren’t a thing here. I don’t think I ever was on a BBQ so IDK what happens there but our traditional meat dishes don’t have sugar*. Maybe some quince or apple, I did that with deer 10-something years ago and it was good ;).

*There is a single exception, it happens to game but domesticated rabbits too, it has a little bit of sugar/sweetener in the sauce. Very odd especially knowing my hate towards added sweetness in my meat but it actually works in that single case…

Sometimes sweet milk bothers me but usually not. But it comes handy in a coffee, not like I need any sweetness in that. But a little isn’t bad. I just can’t drink milk as in my childhood, as a neutral drink. It’s a sweet drink now.

I have found some lactose free cream in a supermarket yesterday. It was the cheapest whipping cream I saw since long… So good that lactose free doesn’t mean higher price (sometimes it does but it’s not a big difference even then). If my dairy already contains sugar and sweetness suits it, I want it to be properly sweet :wink: I want to make the sugar count!
It won’t be an every day thing, of course but on my coffee-y days it’s nice.

I never felt eggs sweet yet but I feel them too salty in desserts sometimes.

I don’t have a thing as “filling”. I get satiated by a lot of protein and fat from the right sources. Liver and eggs hardly could make me satiated but probably just because I would get bored of them before I could reach 100g fat and protein. For my second meal they have way bigger chances. But 2 meals are way too much food for me and my goals on the average day. That’s why I aim to do OMAD and I don’t know why it is so hard when nothing else works and I need it… I need actual effort to do it and I don’t like to put more efforts into my woe than just wondering and planning and putting together nice meals…

I can’t do simple so it’s another thing I need to put some real effort into it to have a chance to happen… Sigh. I LOVE simple. Just like I love (some level of) order. I am just very bad at both.