the.com/offal
The organs your ancestors fought over and you now pay extra to avoid.
means The internal organs and other trimmings removed from a butchered animal — liver, kidneys, heart, tripe, and the like — once considered everyday eating and now mostly sidelined by Western plates.
from Simply 'off' + 'fall' — the bits that fall off when an animal is butchered, swept aside from the prime cuts. First written as one word in Middle English, it described kitchen scraps and entrails alike before narrowing to its grislier, organ-meat sense.
- name origin
- literally the parts that fall off the carcass
- nutrient density
- liver beats kale in almost every vitamin
- global status
- delicacy abroad, afterthought in most US kitchens
- waste factor
- skipping it wastes nearly half the animal