Have a heart for Valentine's Day!

I'm in favor of nose to tail eating. Organ meats are very nutritious. My mother served liver often. I don't remember there being a big deal about it. One time a neighbor girl was over for dinner. Her father was a grocery store manager. She said she only ate steak, so my mother called it "liver-steak". Tongue is also delicious. It is a very tender meat.

I have tried cooking beef heart a few times. It tastes like a cross between liver and steak. It can be cooked like steak. I researched a lot of recipes online. So far, I'm more successful when I make stew out of it. I have made Beef Burgundy from Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet. It was pretty good. I liked it but my family was lukewarm about it. I found it is a little better mixed with stew meat.

This recipe tastes like classic American beef stew.

1 beef heart

2 lbs stew meat

1 bottle stout ale

1 can of tomato paste

2 bay leaves

6 cloves garlic

1 TB dried minced onions (or 1/4 cup minced fresh onions)

1.5 tsp dried thyme

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

lard or tallow for frying

water maybe

5-6 potatoes, 5-6 carrots, peeled and chopped into bite size pieces.

1 small bag of frozen peas

Chop up the heart into very small pieces, like the size of playing dice. Brown meat in lard or tallow. Deglaze pan with bottle of beer. Scrape up bits off bottom of pan. Add tomato paste, 2 TB balsamic vinegar, thyme, dried onions, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Add to meat. The recipe does not have a lot of water so that a thickening agent is not needed later.

(Here's the goofy part. It ended up being about 5 lbs of meat. I weighed the meat and sauce and put half in the freezer. I put the other half in the slow cooker.)

Cover the meat with the peeled and chopped potatoes and carrots. You have to eyeball this. Use the ratio of meat to vegetables that you prefer. Cook it on low for 8 hours.

At serving time I added water, more balsamic to taste and the frozen peas. The peas warm up from the heat of the stew.