Comments on: Who Are the Modern Offal Eaters?

By: Michele

Michele — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:48:13 +0000

Strange that no-one mentions the two very distinguishing characteristics of offal. One is that it is now the most expensive animal-meat, by weight, that one can purchase in the West. There is a strange meat-industry prejudice against developing the number of offal-eaters. In London I can buy exquisite lambs’ offal in sophisticated Middle Eastern food shops — but how much of the West has those? There are delicious pates etc to be made of the offal that are frankly unaffordable to even enthusiasts.

Second, offal needs to be eaten — not only for the environmental principle that the “whole animal” is appreciating the aniaml itself … but also because discarded offal is a big source of atmosphere-polluting methane. There are some energy plants that use offal in industrial amounts to create methane as a harnessed energy, but most is about 20 times as bad for the atmosphere as your car. For that matter, your own innards are methane generators — and we all might as well sustain our innards by digesting the innards of other animals, and keep the methane out of the skies longer.

By: Ellen

Ellen — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:04:20 +0000

My parents were both kids in the depression (in Australia) years – they ate offal and brought me and my siblings up on brains, kidneys, liver, tripe, pressed tongue, home-made brawn, trotters, bacon bones, marrow and they saved and re-used baking fats etc. I feel ‘different’ from my peers when I eat offal – like the modern middle-class ‘gourmands’ noted in the article, but I also I feel connected with my family’s history too. Nose to tail eating is an ancient and ‘environmentally friendly’ practice – I wish our modern society was not so wasteful and disconnected from where food comes from. If we urbanites were all still able, in our neat homes and yards, to put in the effort required to grow our own pigs, I bet we wouldn’t waste a scrap.

By: Freya

Freya — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 10:58:07 +0000

I had my offal epiphany after experimenting with pigs trotters, which I cooked in a stew with breast of mutton. The flavour of the scant meat left on the pigs foot was unsurpassed by any other part of the beast (perhaps, except the hock) and has left me wanting to try more. I am avidly reading Fergus Hendersons Nose to Tail Cooking.

By: Kieran Hall

Kieran Hall — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:52:32 +0000

Thats very interesting. Love the quote from Bourdain.