Posted by johngl
Just what the heck is offal? And what do they have to do with sweetbreads?
Offal is just about any part of an animal that is off-cut during the butchering process. This can range from pig snouts to oxtails. Tongue, liver, kidneys, thymus glands, and pancreas are all offal. Believe it or not, a lot of that stuff winds up in your hot dogs and beef sausages, so you’ve probably eaten it without knowing it.
I prefer to eat them on purpose.
Sweetbreads then, refer to both the thymus gland and pancreas of our those furry friends that wind up on our dinner plates. What you’ll find in stores is usually beef sweetbreads though lamb sweetbreads can be found in certain specialty stores or ethnic grocers.
At some point in my life, I got the idea that sweetbreads were from the pituitary gland, which is a major player in the endocrine system. I was obviously mistaken and I hate that. Those that I have misinformed, I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.
I’ve tried cooking sweetbreads before and getting them right can be elusive. There are varying methodologies. There is the poach and soak method. There is the soak and poach method. Then there is the soak, poach, soak some more, then press method. Some say poach in water, others say milk. It can go on and on. And on.
The good news is, they’re cheap, so if you screw the pooch, you’ve lost nothing but your time and perhaps a little dignity.
I’ve suffered the “ewww” look from the most glorious spousal unit and that ain’t pretty. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I fail spectacularly. No matter, at least I learn something from each fail.
So, due to the varying range of preparatory methods associated with sweetbreads, I developed my own. I poached in milk.
The idea here is not to totally cook these things, just poach them for a few minutes.
After that, I chilled them down in ice water, then dissolved some salt into the poaching liquid (milk) and soaked them for several days in the fridge. I didn’t intend to do this multi-day soak thing, but it worked out pretty well. The whole idea of the soaking thing is to get any residual blood out of the organs.
Judging by the color of the milk, it worked. It turned a bit pinkish.
Now I had this thing to contend with:
Notice how much paler it is? That is what we’re supposed to see. But what to do with this glob of glandular goodness?
There is a membrane around this thing that holds the lobes together. This is the part I can’t quite seem to get right. But I did manage to get a few lobes free for this particular test run.
I sprinkled a bit of salt and pepper on these, then dredged them in corn starch.
I popped them into some 350° olive oil and fried them for a couple of minutes.
The result? A few of these were pretty tasty with a good texture. Others were a bit too salty. Some were a bit too chewy.
Obviously, I have to run a few more experiments with this stuff. I want them all to be tender and juicy before I try serving them to the most glorious spousal unit again. I don’t want her next offal experience to be awful.
