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Fried hearts

Is it really heartless to eat hearts?

There is now the “nose to tail” movement, ie the conscious effort to eat an animal completely again, from nose to tail. This is intended to express respect for the animal: If you kill and slaughter an animal in order to eat it, you should at least use the whole animal completely. In addition, the traditional dishes that have slowly disappeared from menus also have their taste appeal and sometimes offer a special dimension that we are often no longer used to today. In a country as barren as Iceland, everything that could be used was traditionally used, which is why classic Icelandic cuisine has many corresponding dishes with liver, hearts, heads, feet, testicles, etc.

In Iceland, this dish is usually prepared with lamb hearts. On average, a lamb heart weighs around 150g, for this dish you should expect 300 g of heart per person. For 4 people you need approx. 1 kg of hearts.

I find it quite difficult to get lamb hearts in normal grocery stores or butchers here in Germany, but you can also make do with other hearts.


Ingredients for 4 persons

6-8 lamb hearts (approx. 1 kg)
4 Tbsp flour
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp thyme
3 Tbsp butter
1 onion
150 g mushrooms
1 apple
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp rhubarb jam
250 ml cream
salt and pepper


Preparation

Remove fat and the firmer parts from the hearts and then cut them into small pieces.

On a soup plate, mix the flour with salt, pepper and thyme...

...and briefly turn the chopped hearts into the flour mixture.

In a large pan, slowly heat 2 tablespoons of butter and let it melt.

Then fry the heart pieces coated in flour over medium heat for a total of about 5 minutes on all sides.

Then remove the fried heart pieces from the pan and keep them warm in the oven at 175 °F (80 °C) upper and lower heat.

Melt the other tablespoon of butter in the pan.

Peel the onion, halve it and cut it into thin strips, then fry it in the butter.

Wash the mushrooms, remove the stalk if necessary and halve the mushrooms (or quarter them depending on size) and add them to the pan.

Also wash the apple, then peel it, remove the core and cut the pulp into small pieces. Then add the apple pieces to the pan and fry them briefly.

Now add the rhubarb jam to the pan...

...pour the cream over everything, salt, pepper and thyme and simmer for a few more minutes.

Add the hearts to the sauce, mix...

...and traditionally serve with potatoes or mashed potatoes.

[Translated from here.]