page_title: Offal
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Offal / North America / United States
caption_attribution_description: Deep fried bovine testicles
context_page_description: Offal, also called variety meats, pluck or organ meats, is the viscera and entrails of a butchered animal. As an English mass noun, the term "offal" has no plural form. The word does not refer to a particular list of edible organs, which varies by culture and region, but includes most internal organs and excludes muscle and bone. Offal may also refer to the by-products of milled grains, such as corn or wheat.
  Some cultures strongly consider offal as food to be taboo, while others use it as everyday food, or in delicacies. Certain offal dishes—including foie gras, pâté and sweetbread—are internationally regarded as gourmet food in the culinary arts. Others remain part of traditional regional cuisine and may be consumed especially in connection with holidays. This includes Scottish haggis, Jewish chopped liver, U.S. chitterlings, Mexican menudo, as well as many other dishes. On the other hand, intestines are traditionally used as casing for sausages.
context_section_description: Although the term offal is used in the United Kingdom and Canada, in the United States the terms variety meats or organ meats are used instead. In America, some regional cuisines make extensive use of certain organs of specific animals. The derisive term "mystery meat" is often used to describe offal which have been ground or otherwise heavily processed in order to obscure its origin.
  In the United States, the giblets of chickens, turkeys, and ducks are much more commonly consumed than the mammal offal. Traditional recipes for turkey gravy and stuffing typically include the bird's giblets (the traditional Thanksgiving meal in the US). Use of organs of mammals is not common, except for the liver, which is common to a certain degree. Examples include liver sausage (braunschweiger) and pâté. Liver and onions is a traditional, "classic" menu item in diners throughout the country, often as a "blue plate special".
  Mammal offal is somewhat more popular in certain areas. In the American South, some recipes include chitterlings, livers, brain, and hog maw. Scrapple, sometimes made from pork offal, is somewhat common in the Mid-Atlantic US, particularly in Philadelphia and areas with Amish communities.  Pepper Pot soup (frequently served in Philadelphia) is made from beef tripe. Fried-brain sandwiches are a specialty in the Ohio River Valley. Rocky Mountain oysters, "prairie oysters", or "turkey fries" (beef testicles) are a delicacy eaten in some cattle-raising parts of the western US and Canada.
  Offal dishes from many other cultures exist but the appeal is usually limited to the immigrant communities that introduced the dish.  For example, chopped liver, lungen stew, and beef tongue (especially as used by Kosher delis) in American Jewish culture, or menudo in Mexican-American culture.
  Ironically, given its provenance and history, offal has started to be reintroduced as an item of haute cuisine, with stylish restaurants offering roasted bone marrow, fried pork rind, tongue or heart as part of their menus. Additionally, small but growing communities following particular diets or eating philosophies such as 'Nourishing Traditions' by Sally Fallon or the Paleo diet consume organ meat, especially liver, primarily for its nutrient density. It is not prepared in any particular way, but rather ground up and generally disguised within the food. Desiccated liver is sold in caplets to be consumed purely for the nutritive benefits. Bone broth is also gaining popularity and is simply the carcass or bones of an animal boiled for a long duration with minimal salt, again, not a culinary preparation, rather a form of food as medicine.
caption: Rocky mountain oysters
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