How to cook
In the past when my friends and I were cleaning our deer we had always discarded the organs along with the carcass but I asked myself, why aren’t we eating some of this?
So after searching for some recipies and seeing testimonials about the deer heart I started questioning whether or not we’ve been missing out on a very edible cut of our game.
So I decided to start saving my hearts and cooking them up and let me tell you… I’m sure glad I did because this easy recipe will convince you to keep your hearts as well.
Heart is an amazing and tasty cut that you must try. Check it out!
Ingredients
- Heart
- Butter
- Onion
- Garlic puree
- Sea salt
- Pepper
Start with your heart fully cleaned out. That means be sure you’ve washed out as much of the blood clots as possible. Here I have a Whitetail (right) and Blackbuck heart (left).
You’ll want to remove as much of the white as possible as this is difficult to eat. You can just slice it clean off at the end and sort of run the knife under what’s left being careful to leave as much red meat as possible.
Here you can see the white ends cut off on each heart. Discard them as you see fit…
…at this point in our house after trimming meat my dog, Biscuit, knows what’s coming to him so he waites patiently for a delictible meal…
Waste not, want not…he gets the trim and a good meal.
Now you’re left with nice cuts.
You’ll now want to slice them into about 1/4″ to 1/2″ slices starting from the “top” or then end where the white cuts used to be. As you can see I got 4 slices from each heart. I gave Biscuit the tips.
You’ll now want to cut out the white stringy material in each slice. You don’t want those getting stuck in your teeth…discard them.
Now it’s time to gather your ingredients: garlic, butter, onion, pepper and sea salt.
Go ahead and season both sides of each slice with the sea salt and pepper. As you can see, I like to season my cuts really well. Season same as you’d season your tenderloins and backstraps.
Get your butter melting in a medium-high heat.
Cut up your onion. I used half the onion here but going forward I’ll probably use the whole thing. Your call.
When the butter is melted throw in your onions and garlic. I like garlic so I used a large spoon to scoop it out. If you’re wondering err on the side of more garlic with this one.
Stir it up and brown the onions. Take care not to burn them or the garlic but get them to a nice brown twinge.
Once the onions and garlic have been cooked to a nice color move them to the side and place your seasoned heart slices in the pan.
VERY IMPORTANT: you’ll want to make sure to only cook them for 1 minute on each side. Here we can see that after one minute the cooking side is grey about half way up the side of the slice. That’s when you know it is time to flip them.
Flipped now and only cooking for 1 more minute on the other side!
It’s been only 2 minutes total, the sides of the slices have a grey color and they are now ready to take off the heat.
Place the slices on a plate out of the pan.
Cover the slices with aluminum foil for 3-5 minutes.
Continue to cook the onions if you’d like a little more brown color to them like I do. You can do this while your heart is waiting under the foil.
Make your favorite cocktail and after 3-5 minutes remove the foil and cover the slices with your onions from your pan.
Now enjoy an amazing cut that I guarantee you’ll never throw away again!
P.S. If anyone out there doesn’t want their hearts, please send to Feed Bandit HQ c/o El Bandido. 
Thanks!