Tongues, Livers, & Hearts: The Surprising Revival of Offal

I take a gulp of Dragon’s Milk to wash down the taste of the pork tongue.

It’s a Saturday night at Durham’s Dashi, and in the corner booth of the restaurant’s izakaya, or Japanese gastropub, I am surrounded by little platesof pork tongue, beef heart, beef tendons, chicken heart, chicken liver, chicken skin, and shrimp heads.

The intimate, industrial space is tucked upstairs from the street-level ramen shop, like a playful tree house. Likewise, the izakaya‘s menu dares you to play, to hopscotch past your comfort zone. That’s why I’m here: to have a cocktail and order everything that makes me squirm. I sip liberally from the Dragon’s Milka drink of gin, cucumber, and unfiltered sakebetween bites.

Most of Dashi’s offal and off-cut selections are yakimono, or grilled dishes. The meat is salted and charred, sometimes served with a bit of wasabi. It is unabashedly naked. Either accept the ingredient for everything it isand is notor return to the land of Wonderbra chicken breasts.

I tentatively bite some pork tongue off the blackened skewer, chewing long enough to contemplate the irony of tasting tongue. The beef heart, like its chicken counterpart, is deep, dark, and meaty. Because the heart is a muscle, its flavor is less mineral and more approachable. I take another bite, then another.

The chicken livers, common but rarely served alone, evoke a pate that is done trying to impress people. There are no bells or whistles, just rosy centers with a buttery texture and iron-rich taste. As I push aside the beef tendonsdeep-fried, curry-dusted, greasyand devour the shrimp heads, I realize that the most notable part of the meal was not any one bite, but the server’s relaxed, assured reply: “Chicken hearts, livers, and skin, right?” he said. “Those are the best parts.”

I can’t help but wonder: Since when?

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The second half of the twentieth century was awful to offal. Between the decline of the family farm and the rise of the industrialized meat market, we effectively scared organs and off-cuts from our butcher shops and supermarkets, our restaurants and homes.

Deriving from Middle Dutch terms for “off” and “to fall,” offal originally meant “to fall off” the carcass. These were the organs, also known as “variety meats,” that spilled out during slaughter. The term has grown to include not just innards, such as heart and kidneys, but also extremities, such as ears and feet. The word off-cut, separately, refers to cheaper, less mainstream muscle cuts, such as cheeks or jowls.

Whatever you call it, the theme here is our idea of off-putting. For the last several decades, euphemisms have dominated American meat commerce, effectively serving to shield carnivores from the corporeality of the animals they eat. Pork chops are good, pig cheeks bad. The clearer the connection to the animal, the lower the appeal.

If the Silent Generation cooked tongue for baby boomers, the baby boomers bemoaned tongue to budding millennials. But millennials are now Instagramming the #tacosdelengua they #love at the local Mexican food truck.

More and more peopleboth across the country and in the Trianglewant to know the story behind their steak. Did the cow live nearby? Was it raised on antibiotics? Free-range? Grass-fed? Happy? The answers elucidate various issues, from food quality to animal rights to environmental sustainability. The early twenty-first century oozes an offal renaissance, like marrow from a shank bone. Liver is cool. Butchers are rock stars. Nose-to-tail might be the new farm-to-fork.

“People are rediscovering odd bits,” writes Jennifer McLagan in Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal. “In the last decade, food has become an increasingly politicized issue, with many voices raging against the industrial food system.”

Steven Goff, the former head butcher at Standard Foods, has seen the demand for nose-to-tail sprout, bud, and blossom since he entered the industry.

“I’ve watched it grow immensely over the last ten years. I remember when sweetbreads were three bucks a pound. People would give you hearts and livers for free,” he says. “Sweetbreads have gotten to be twelve dollars a pound.”

Goff is gearing up to open his own food truck, Brine Haus Meat + Provisions, by the end of August. The venture will focus on whole animal butchery, with an emphasis on Southern cuisine and European charcuterie. Goff foresees dishes like a liver mush falafel sandwich and smoked hog head boudin.

He isn’t the only one in the area embracing odd bits, either. As offal has become less taboo and more trendy, local restaurants are experimenting with proteins that may not be accessible in supermarkets or familiar to diners. Sustainability-driven operations like Firsthand Foods are connecting North Carolina’s pasture-based livestock producers with these restaurants.

At Rose’s Meat Market & Sweet Shop, co-owner and head butcher Justin Meddis says hesitation on the part of the home cook to try these discarded bits yields opportunity for the chef. By preparing unfamiliar ingredients, restaurants serve as the foot-in-the-door spaces for nose-to-tail eating.

“If there was a plate of chicken heart skewers [at Rose’s], that would not sell,” he says. “But if you can just try it, that’s a little bit different. It’s less of a commitment.”

Indeed, a lot of people seem willing to “just try it”whatever it may be. Not too far from Dashi, Mateo features variety meats in its tapas selection, from chicken liver pate and fried pork skin to sweetbreads with veal bacon and blood sausage. Gourmet Kingdom in Chapel Hill offers smoked pork tongue, spicy pig ear, hot pot beef tendon, stir-fried pig kidneys, and even stir-fried pig intestine.

Then there are the crispy pigs’ ears with mostarda at Pizzeria Toro, the crispy pig head at Stanbury, the Vietnamese pork cheek sandwich at The Pig, the grilled pork neck and herb salad at Bida Manda.

It should come as little surprise that a state that worships whole-hog barbecue would raise eaters who are willing to take a stab at pig offalnot to mention chefs who know what to do with it.

After all, that pork tongue wasn’t half-bad, even if it didn’t taste like chicken.

This article appeared in print with the headline “Tastes Like Chicken (Heart)”