Why we should eat more chicken hearts

I’ve been working with Field & Flower for nearly two years now. In that time, I’ve learned about how the meat we consume is cut and processed. Out of all that I’ve learned, I’d say that the importance of buying meat in natural, balanced proportions is the biggest among them.

Carcass balancing is a passionate campaign of ours to encourage our customers to buy meat in a way that allows us to utilise as much of an animal as possible. This ensures that that nothing goes to waste. Our supply chain manager, Sam, is a wealth of information when it comes to buying meat. He’s recently done a blog post about this very topic. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to do so, as it’s a great, informative read.

A great way to help us with using all the parts of an animal is to buy as many cuts as you can in a single order. If you order chicken breasts, for example, you could also order chicken legs, thighs, or wings. We also provide the option to buy chicken carcasses, wings, and giblets as bundle, which still has a great deal of meat. The bones and giblets are also great for stock making.

Another way to use all the meat available is to consider adding offal cuts to your next order basket. Offal cuts refers to organ meat like cheeks, tails, liver, feet, and hearts. Offal meats are extremely dense in b-vitamins and a variety of minerals including iron, magnesium, selenium and zinc. If you’re looking for a boost in protein, you could try adding an offal cut to your meal planning. A heart, for example, offers nutrients that boost stamina and endurance and building muscle.

I know the thought of eating livers or hearts is an idea that can be hard to stomach! I admit, offal meat wouldn’t be my first choice. I tend to go for the mince or chicken breasts like everyone else. There are lots of cultures, though, that utilise offal cuts and make meat like chicken hearts a part of their weekly shop as we might beef mince. Brazil, for example, is the number one consumer of chicken hearts in the world. They reportedly consume as much as 4 to 5 billion chicken hearts a year. So many chicken hearts are eaten that it’s the only part of the chicken they don’t export because they can’t keep enough in stock to do so! They’re served as appetisers or sides in restaurants and the hearts are even offered as a pizza topping or used in burger meat.

We recently added chicken hearts to our range of products and there was much buzz about it on our Instagram page. Some people said they’d never tried chicken hearts and others make a point to have it as regularly as possible, though it’s proved hard for them to source. As with most things, where there is lots of demand there is supply. If we are all more open to eating offal meats, the more availability there will be.

Chicken hearts are firm in texture and not that far from dark chicken meat in terms of flavour. Our marketing team gave it a try recently and described it like a sausage when cooked, which is a description I can get behind! The hearts are versatile in the number of ways they can be prepared. We recommend cooking it seasoned to your taste, like a piri piri rub, and then pan-frying in foamy butter for about 8 minutes. Many of our commenters on Instagram suggested frying in butter, also, so it must be good! In the summer, you could roast them over a BBQ for a little extra crispiness and dip them in soured cream or other condiments.

If you’ve never tried offal meat before, I think our chicken hearts would be a safe and tasty way to introduce it into your shopping list. And, with around 20 hearts per order, if you like them, you’ll have many more to keep eating!