How to Cook Beef Heart

Heart is the cut people are most nervous about and the one that rewards them fastest, because it is not really an organ in the way liver or kidney are. It is a muscle that has worked hard, continuously, for years.

“And, so, yeah, I think we're seeing people paying attention to all of the different cuts and using all animal cooking with tallow is kind of a hot trend right now. So 10 years ago, I was trying to talk to anybody who would listen and, oh everybody wants to do it now.”

Gray Shipley

Trim it properly first

This is most of the work. There is a layer of hard fat on the outside, silverskin, and some tough valve tissue inside the chambers. All of it comes off. What you are left with is deep red, dense and completely clean, and it should look like lean steak because that is what it is.

Then cook it like a steak

1. Slice it across the grain into pieces about half an inch thick.
2. Salt it and let the surface dry.
3. Very hot pan, two minutes a side at most.
4. Pull it rare to medium rare. It is extremely lean and goes to liver-like and firm if pushed.
5. Rest briefly, then slice thin.

Do not overcook it

That is the whole warning. Heart has essentially no intramuscular fat, so there is nothing to cover for you. Past medium it turns dry and takes on the mineral edge people expect from organ meat and then blame on the cut.

“And he would keep the weights of the cattle, his observations of the herd. If he noticed one that maybe wasn't eating as much or not drinking as much or separating, he would keep all of those notes and all of that data and years of notebooks that he always kept and he could go back and see.”

Gray Shipley

“And a good farmer is one who's always been disciplined about their records. That's what the farmer's almanac was.”

Gray Shipley

If it came out tough, it was almost certainly the heat or the slicing: the four causes apply here as much as to a ribeye.