Southern Recipes: Is Offal Awful?

Offal is in general considered the organ meat of animals, but includes other "variety meats" like the head and feet. Every ethnic group has its traditional offal dishes. The following are just a few of my Southern favorites.

If you have every tried real South Caroline style barbeque you have probably had pork hash over rice. This is a low country tradition. The main ingredients in pork hash are the head meat and pork liver. Preparing pork hash takes a bit of time. The liver and the split head (with brains removed) are boiled in a large stockpot. After the head meat is tender to the point of falling off the bone. The meats are the removed to cool and be ground. The stock is refrigerated to aid in removing the excess fat.

In a large pot, the ground liver and head meat are combined with some of the reserved stock and seasoned. The seasoning blends vary from family to family but always reflects the chef's favorite barbeque sauce. Diced onions and occasional peppers are added and the hash slow simmers for all the flavors to blend. Then the hash is served over rice with great smokey, pit-cooked barbequed pork and a variety of side dishes. This is an awesome example of offal at its Southern best.

One of my Southern offal favorites is fried chicken gizzards. The chicken's gizzard is its crop or the muscle that grinds its food. This muscle gets plenty of exercise so it can be tough. To tenderize, may cooks will let the gizzards soak overnight in buttermilk, in the fridge of course. After soaking, the gizzards are seasoned with salt and pepper, battered and deep-fried. The gizzards can be just seasoned, breaded and fried, but you won't know tender gizzards until you try the buttermilk marinade.

Dirty rice is a great Louisiana dish that has spread throughout the South. My favorite version differs from the classic. The version I prefer includes all the chicken giblets, neck meat, gizzard, heart and liver finely diced or ground. The giblets are boiled and the stock reserved for making the rice. Diced onions and bell peppers are sautéed in the rice pot, then the giblets mixed with equal parts spicy country pork sausage added and sautéed. Uncooked rice is added along with two parts stock and cooked covered for fifteen minutes. This is my standard side dish for beer butt chicken.

What Southern Thanksgiving's Day meal would be complete without turkey giblet gravy? This gravy includes all the turkey giblets boiled, sliced and returned to the stock with sliced boiled egg. The gravy is thickened with cornstarch and seasoning is simple with salt, pepper and a little poultry seasoning. Sometimes defying tradition is not a bad thing. Blending the cornstarch with a little soy sauce adds flavor and deepens the color of the gravy.

Liver pudding is a less well known but tasty Southern treat. Liver pudding is a Southern variation of Braunswagger. Traditionally made from ground pork liver and head meat prepared as for the pork hash. The cooked ground meat is mixed with seasoning, some of the pork fat, pork stock and formed in a loaf to chill and set. My favorite variety includes cooked rice and diced onions; it is a poor boy's variation of the Louisiana classic, Sausage Bodine. It is great sliced cold in a sandwich or sliced and fried to go along with some cheese grits and homemade biscuits.

These are just a few Southern recipes that prove that offal is not awful it's awesome!