Heart recipes are an easy way to add more organ meats to your meals. While offal can seem intimidating, organ meats are among the most nutrient-dense foods available. The heart is simply a muscle and is often one of the most flavorful and tender organ meats you can cook.
Our ancestors ate very differently than most people do today. As awareness of the health impacts of a processed, sugar-heavy Standard American Diet grows, interest in traditional foods like organ meats has returned. People are rediscovering fermented foods, baking sourdough, choosing grass-fed fats, and eating more nutrient-rich ingredients.
Organ meats largely disappeared from mainstream American shopping when butchery shifted to large-scale processing and supermarkets. Highly perishable items like offal don’t fit well with the long supply chains and shelf-stable focus of big stores, so many people lost the practical knowledge of preparing these parts.
Fortunately, that knowledge still exists. I’ve gathered dozens of heart recipes to help you reintroduce nutrient-dense organ meats into your diet. Heart is an excellent entry point: it’s typically mild, cooks similarly to a fine steak, and when prepared correctly it can be tender and delicious.
If you’re new to organ meats, start small. Ground heart blended into burgers or mixed with other ground meat is a subtle way to introduce these flavors and nutrients. Cooked on its own and properly trimmed, heart can taste like a rich, tender steak.
Where to Buy Heart Meat
Heart meat is often difficult to find at standard supermarkets because many slaughterhouses remove and dispose of organ meats unless they are specifically requested. Specialized butchers and online suppliers that cater to paleo, primal, or nose-to-tail eating markets are a reliable source for cleaned, trimmed, and portioned hearts.
Some suppliers offer a variety of hearts, including beef, venison, bison, and elk. Packages commonly arrive pre-cleaned and sliced, making them convenient to cook. Many also sell blends that mix heart and liver into ground meat for burgers—an easy way to add nutrition without changing the flavor significantly.
How to Cook Heart
The heart is a muscle, and while it’s a high-use muscle with rich flavor, its structure makes it more tender than many other high-use cuts. Unlike tougher cuts that benefit from long, slow cooking, heart often shines when cooked hot and fast like a premium steak.
The Best Way to Cook Heart
For most hearts, searing hot and fast with ample fat (butter or oil) produces the best results. Treat trimmed heart steaks like filet, porterhouse, or ribeye: a quick, intense sear and finishing slightly rare will preserve tenderness and flavor. Personal preferences vary—some prefer well-done, others slow-cook hearts into stews—but hot-and-fast is the most recommended approach for preserving the meat’s natural texture.
How to Prepare a Heart for Cooking
If you buy heart from a butcher, it’s often already cleaned, rinsed, and trimmed of excess fat and vessels. If you harvest the animal yourself, rinse the heart, remove the thin outer membrane, and trim fat and connective tissue. Small hearts (chicken, duck) can often be cooked whole. Larger hearts (beef, venison) are usually trimmed into steaks, chunks, or ground for other dishes. When cut correctly, a venison or beef heart can open like a book into a flat sheet suitable for steaks.
Heart Recipes
Heart recipes vary by animal mainly due to size and traditional preparations. Small poultry hearts are great whole and fried or skewered. Medium hearts like lamb or goat are often diced or stuffed. Large hearts like beef are versatile—slice for steaks, cut into kebabs, grind into burgers, or use in stews.
Beef Heart Recipes
A whole beef heart can weigh several pounds. Butchers commonly halve and trim it for cleaning and easier cooking. You can slice it into steaks, dice it for kebabs, grind it into burgers, or simmer it in stew. A common ratio for blending heart into ground meat is one part heart to three parts regular ground beef—this adds nutrition while keeping familiar flavor and texture.
- Grilled beef heart steaks
- Peruvian anticuchos (beef heart kebabs)
- Beef heart stew
- Beef heart satay
- Stuffed ox heart
- Beef heart with chimichurri
- Beef heart meatballs
- Beef heart ragu
- Beef heart burger patties
Chicken Heart Recipes (and Duck, Goose)
Poultry hearts are small and cook quickly. They’re excellent whole in tacos, skewered as yakitori, or battered and fried. Chicken hearts are among the mildest hearts, making them an ideal starting point for someone new to offal. Because they come in small quantities, they’re easy to experiment with without committing to large amounts of unfamiliar meat.
- Fried breaded chicken hearts
- Pan-fried chicken hearts
- Air fryer chicken hearts
- Chicken hearts with mushrooms and onions
- Rosemary chicken hearts
- Chicken heart confit
- Chicken heart yakitori
Duck Heart Recipes
- Deviled duck hearts
- Grilled duck hearts
- Duck hearts with pickled blueberries, fennel, and wild rice
Lamb and Goat Heart Recipes
Lamb and goat hearts are manageable single-meal sizes. They rarely carry the strong gamey flavors sometimes associated with mature lamb or goat and are often diced or stuffed. Because of their size, they work well as kebabs, stews, or dramatic plated entrees when stuffed and braised.
- Lamb heart kebabs
- Lamb heart stew
- Lamb heart sandwich with mint dressing
- Lamb heart and couscous salad
- Braised stuffed lamb hearts
Game Meat Heart Recipes
Hearts from wild game like deer, elk, or wild hog will have subtle flavor differences, often influenced by the fat surrounding the heart. Trimming excess fat and frying in a neutral oil can reduce pronounced gaminess. Many hunters prefer to celebrate the natural flavors of wild game rather than masking them.
- How to cook deer heart
- Peruvian-style grilled deer heart (anticuchos)
- Breaded and fried deer heart with buttermilk gravy
- Corned venison heart
- Pickled deer heart
- Fried bear heart
- Stuffed moose heart
Traditional Cooking Guides
If you want to explore more traditional and nose-to-tail cooking, there are many resources available with recipes and techniques for liver, venison, small game, and basic food preservation. These guides can help expand your repertoire and make it easier to incorporate organ meats into everyday meals.
- Venison liver recipes and preparation tips
- Extensive venison recipe collections
- Small-game recipes for hunters
- How to make apple cider vinegar
- Beginner’s cheesemaking guide
Whether you start with small poultry hearts or a trimmed beef heart steak, these recipes and techniques make it simple to enjoy the nutrition and flavor of organ meats. Start with a friendly preparation, experiment with seasonings and cooking times, and you may find that heart becomes a favorite cut in your kitchen.