The heart, liver, kidneys, and the less familiar parts—collectively known as wobbly bits, jiggly bits, offal, or giblets, the stuff left in the gut pile or on the processing room floor—can be some of the best venison you will ever eat.
It is a hunting season delicacy and typically one of the first cuts of meat a hunter will cook since organ meats spoil faster than muscle meats. It's typical, therefore, to consume the heart, liver, and kidneys of a kill before frying up, for example, the venison backstrap or tenderloin.
The liver is a filtering organ and therefore has potential to have high levels of a number of contaminants. As a result, the NH Fish and Game Department recommends that no deer liver be eaten.
Eating venison fresh isn't recommended because of how common parasites and tapeworms are. Even in homemade jerky and fermented sausages, E. coli can stay in the deer's intestinal tract. You should steam, roast, or boil venison to 165 degrees Fahrenheit before drying.
Venison originally meant the meat of a game animal but now refers primarily to the meat of antlered ungulates such as elk or deer (or antelope in South Africa). Venison can be used to refer to any part of the animal, so long as it is edible, including the internal organs.
Eating meat from wild game can provide you with a lean source of protein. However, wild game organs can have much higher amounts of chemicals and metals than the meat. Eating wild game organs should always be avoided.
While tongue and heart are both excellent choices and great introductions to organ meat consumption, liver is by far the most important organ meat you should be eating. It's one of the most nutrient-dense foods in existence, and contains many nutrients that are difficult to get elsewhere.
Do not eat the eyes, brain, tongue, spinal cord, spleen, tonsils or lymph nodes of any deer. If hunting in an area where CWD has been confirmed, have your harvested animal tested for CWD and avoid consuming meat from any animal testing positive.
Do not shoot, handle or eat meat from deer and elk that look sick or are acting strangely or are found dead (road-kill). When field-dressing a deer: Wear latex or rubber gloves when dressing the animal or handling the meat.
The heart, liver, kidneys, and the less familiar parts—collectively known as wobbly bits, jiggly bits, offal, or giblets, the stuff left in the gut pile or on the processing room floor—can be some of the best venison you will ever eat.
Lipid-Soluble Vitamins
One exception is the livers of polar bears and other arctic animals that are known to be toxic [8]. Inuits (Eskimos) often eat polar bear meat, but strictly avoid consuming the bear's liver.
You can also cut off the entire neck, bone-in, and braise it to make pot roast over mashed potatoes. The most ideal cut of meat for slow cooking requires connective tissue – venison neck provides that.
Do not eat the eyes, brain, spinal cord, spleen, tonsils or lymph nodes of any deer.
Toxoplasma gondii is a common parasite that infects warm-blooded animals, including humans, and is a foodborne pathogen. We report a case of acute toxoplasmosis in a 76-year-old man after ingestion of the undercooked heart of a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in Tennessee.
We cooked it anyway and made a downright decent venison pate. Now comes the real tricky part. How do you cook lungs? I knew they were edible because years ago I came across a British butcher's cooking video, where he shows you how to make an old school dish called “butchers faggots.”
Typically you'll see liver being purged in milk, which is good too, but when the livers are from venison, I'll probably soak them in a few washes of water, similar to how I leech the tannins from acorns. The more washes you do, the more flavor will get washed away–for better or for worse.”
You're best bet is to nab a younger buck — anywhere from a year to two years old — if you want tender venison to fill your freezer.
However, some animal studies suggest CWD poses a risk to certain types of non-human primates, like monkeys, that eat meat from CWD-infected animals or come in contact with brain or body fluids from infected deer or elk. These studies raise concerns that there may also be a risk to people.
While there is no strong evidence that chronic wasting disease (CWD) is capable of infecting humans or domestic animals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people discard venison harvested from CWD-infected animals rather than eat it.
Deer will primarily eat browse (woody portion of leaves and stems), forbs (broad-leaved plants), mast (acorns, apples, etc), and grass. Although these are the main foods deer like to eat, the quantity of these different foods differ throughout the year and the region you are hunting.
All three tongues are edible and you can cook them several different ways—though obviously, the bigger the animal, the bigger the tongue, and the larger the meal. A buffalo or a moose tongue will feed 4 or 5 people, whereas an elk tongue might only feed two. It takes a few deer tongues to make a meal.
Heart. Beef heart is the best organ meat to start off with. It tastes like a roast. You can cook it like a roast.
Of all the organs, liver is probably the strongest tasting, and the hardest for many people to stomach, but trust me, it's worth it. As I mentioned earlier, liver is a great source of riboflavin. In fact, it's probably the single best source of riboflavin out there.
Beef liver is perhaps the most nutritious and healthy meat you can eat - and cooked right it's delicious! Gram for gram, beef liver is probably the most nutritious food on earth. This nutrient-dense organ meat contains substantial amounts of vitamin B12, copper, and many other essential nutrients.