I've got several deer hearts in my freezer and am wondering if anyone has a good recipe for preparing them. I also saved the livers but have never eaten venison liver before.

They're great sliced up and pickled.

Also stuffed with a bread stuffing and roasted like a turkey.

Cut heart into strips about 3/8 x3/8 x1 1/2". Chop up an onion ,cook in olive oil till it softens ,add rosemary and a bay leaf . Add heart and saute quickly...Simple as that !!

Heart makes good stew. Cook it either rare or braise it....tough as nails otherwise. Heart and migratory birds are the only things I marinate. Some red wine for a couple days works wonders....then cook it in the wine.

the chef

I guess I'll have to give it a try this weekend.

Thanks for the replies.

HL

HL, take a pound of heart and a pound of liver. Grind both, using the fine plate, and mix with an equal amount of ground beef. Mix all together in a skillet, and brown thoroughly, adding garlic, onion, salt and pepper to taste. After everything is nice and brown, add some flour (a tablespoon or so...) and cut the heat down to where the meat is just simmering, and allow it to cook for about an hour, adding a bit of liquid if necessary. (I like to put a lid on the skillet and just leave a crack so the steam can escape.)

Serve over rice.

I would cut the heart up in small peaces, leave it overnight in a bowl of water in the refrig, drain and wipe off extra water, tenderise it with a meat hammer, roll it in a mixture of flour salt and black pepper and fry it to your taste...excellent most people will think it is tenderloin...I did the first time I ate it at someones house. From that time on I never gave the heart away

Liver and onions, just like you would fix beef liver, don't over cook!!

I just had some last week from a little 8 pt I shot with the bow. Arrow went right thru the liver. We cut it up, dusted it with flour and fried it with onions in a hot pan for maybe 3 minutes per side....yummmmy!! It chases spousal unit out of the house since she can't stand the smell.

You may want to look that liver over carefully before you eat it. I haven't been able to eat one for quite some time as almost every deer that I have taken in the past few years has liver flukes in the liver. Nasty looking things to be sure.

This is a simple recipe that was passed down to me a long time ago. We always do this the night of the kill. But it should work for frozen too. You need the following ingredients.

• Heart
  
• 1/4 stick butter
  
• whorchestershire sacue
  
• medium size onion
  
• case of beer (not dark)
  
• pepper/garlic
  

Slice onion into rings. Slice heart(s) into rings. Put butter,sliced onions, sliced heart, about 2 tablespoons of the whorechestershire sauce, peeper and dry garlic to taste, Now take one of those beers and dump it into the pan as well. The pan should be hot before you put anything into it. Cook for about 10-20 minutes or until the beer is reduced to almost a sauce. I am sure that you will love this recipe. Feel free to use the extra beer as you see fit. Let me know if you try this recipe and like it. Cheers and good eating-Ben

22WRF,

Where are you hunting. We have had a few deer that we collected livers for examination by a biologist to check for liver flukes, and have yet to find any in any of the deer taken in central Texas.

Same here with the flukes, I haven't seen a clean deer liver in 40 years....Leave them in the woods with the rest of the guts.

Damn...I just eat em with flour, salt and pepper cooked in bacon fat and sometimes a little hot sauce. Onions get lonesome without the liver....I haven't seen anything that doesn't belong.

If you have access to cookbooks for cast iron cooking by C-Dub, there's recipes for heart. (though I think they're for elk heart). I'll try to remember to get them for you.

mike

They make great catfish bait, and I would much rather eat catfish.

I never consume internal organs of any animal after taking Parasites of Domestic Animals & posting a few in wildlife mgt classes.When I was employed as a peace officer I'd validate tags for hunters who'd tell me they were having liver so my comment to them was when you change your oil do you cook your oil filter? the liver is the filter of the body one of the main organs to look for endoparasites.

Cut in stripsm flour and brown, use to make chow mein or chop sue.

I clean the heart of deer and moose good. Leave them in cold water over night. Then make sure that you get out all the tough parts like valves, and facia.

Then I cut it up in pices, and fry it with some union, red peppers and musroom, some salt and pepper and a good dash of cream or sourcream. And I let it cook til the cream is as thick as I like it.
Serve with potatoes or rice. Jumm

Johan

quote:

Originally posted by mete:
Cut heart into strips about 3/8 x3/8 x1 1/2". Chop up an onion ,cook in olive oil till it softens ,add rosemary and a bay leaf . Add heart and saute quickly...Simple as that !!

that's the way we eat them.best part of the animal,delicious!

That's the way I cooked it up and it was great.

I started laughing when I saw this again. You really went back to dig this one up.

Thanks for the replies.

Gonna get some more heart this fall.

HL

or dip it in flour and fry it like a fish.it is really the best part of the animal.when gasing up during a caribou hunt i met a guy who told me that one of the guys in his hunting party just fell in the lake and drown/froze to death trying to get some liver that was left out on the ice by some other hunters.

quote:

or dip it in flour and fry it like a fish.it is really the best part of the animal.when gasing up during a caribou hunt i met a guy who told me that one of the guys in his hunting party just fell in the lake and drown/froze to death trying to get some liver that was left out on the ice by some other hunters.

That sounds like something my father could have happen to him... Years back, he left a whitetail liver sitting on a stump one evening during a late Dec. hunt in the TX hill country. About ten that night, after everyone was in bed, he remembered the liver, and got up, went out and got it... But that wasn't enough. He came back in, cooked some of it at 11 pm (keeping everyone else awake!!), and the next morning at five am was offering it around to the rest of the hunting party. (No takers...)

I love my father a lot, and will miss him terribly after he is gone, but DARN!...

i would have tasted it.i am lucky my father never cooked or else i would be dead.my mother on the other hand is someone who has cooked a tedious meal every day of her life almost and has still not stopped.she gets up in the morning and starts cooking for whoever.i would not want a wife like that.I had an overdose of that.I was fat untill I got away from that house.always being offered to eat all day long.had to say yes just to get her to leave me alone.my grandmother was her teacher and she lived with us too.every timev we brought home game we had the liver and hearts cooked within minutes.that was a custom.often she would give me the bullet recovered from within as that is were i used to shoot them for a while.i couldn't believe i had a mother who looked forward to cleaning game and always cooking.