eating heart

I got it into my head that I wanted to eat heart. Not my own or the heart of anyone I know but heart nonetheless. I settled on the hearts of chickens. At the local grocer you can buy a pound of chicken hearts for $1.89. So I did that and went online to find me a recipe. Chicken hearts are not the most popular of meats to cook, so there weren't that many recipes to choose from. I did find a stir fry recipe.

So, chicken hearts look a bit like liver. They also look vaguely like a section of a part of the male anatomy. And so staring down at them in the wok as you brown them is weird. It's not just the shape, but as they are "browned" they turn a familiar color as well. A color that this picture doesn't reflect.



Kind of like a scene from "The Cook, the Thief His Wife and Her Lover," a movie that I saw while in college. It was so disturbing that I watched most of it through my fingers and had trouble sleeping for many days after.

The chicken hearts still have some blood in them which will run out as you cook them and make a kind of blood gravy that smells like chicken. It makes it hard to determine if they are getting successfully browned. They looked cooked but there's still blood seeping out.

I stir fried them with onions, garlic, and mushrooms and served them over brown rice. They tasted vaguely, ever so vaguely, like liver and had this curious chewy texture. Which I guess would happen with a muscle like the heart.

I am trying to decide what is missing from this dish for me and whether I want to cook heart again. Off the top of my head, I think it needs a little sweet, maybe a little fruit. Maybe. Beside that I am not sure. Maybe hearts are to be held and not to be eaten.