LIVER, KIDNEYS & STOMACHE

The kids have tried some raw chicken liver and also some cooked pork liver so far.

Pork liver, kidneys & stomache cooked with ginger and goji berries

Yesterday they got some pork liver, kidneys and stomache. I couldn't bring myself to give these things to them raw yet though. So I boiled all of it with a small bit of ginger and some goji berries.

I must say it went down really well with them. They loved it and it was all polished off in a couple of minutes including the soup.

Well so now I know that there will definitely be a repeat of this meal. :-)

Observations:

They all seem to tolerate it well. Their poops were just a bit softer than their normal very hard poop and slightly darker. I guess it is basically due to the fact that they had organ meat.
 
They all did have partially digested goji berries in their poop though. Initially I thought it was blood but on closer inspection I realised it was the goji berries.

*Research has shown that Goji berries have benefits against cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases, vision-related diseases (such as age-related macular degeneration and glaucoma) or from neuroprotective, anticancer or immunomodulatory activity.

 How to clean and cook the stomache and kidneys:

I don't know how many of you have ever cleaned stomache and kidneys but it's quite a gross process.

Here's how I do it: (if any of you have better ideas or suggestions, please do let me know how you do it)

Pig's stomache

The stomache and kidneys were soaked in water for a few hours. I kept changing the water every hour or so and you will notice quite a lot of yucky slime coming out of the stomache.

Then before cooking it, I cut the stomache open and halve it.

I washed as much of the slime of as I could and then used a big cleaver to scrape the walls of the stomache (both inside and out). It gets another wash and another round of scraping.

Then I take some coarse salt and basically scrub the stomache with it. The kidneys are also scrubbed with salt. The stomache and kidneys are rinsed properly to remove all traces of the salt etc.

The stomache and kidneys being boiled...

Boil a pot of water with 2 or 3 pieces of ginger (about 1cm each) and a handful of goji berries. When the water is boiling put in the stomache and the kidneys and boil for about 20 minutes or so. The water is thrown away and you will see quite alot of scum on the surface of the water.

The liver is boiled on it's own for about 5-10 minutes with some ginger and goji berries too.

When the liver, stomache and kidneys have cooled down, cut them into smaller pieces and serve with the soup from the liver!