Tips For Incorporating Organ Meats Into Your Diet (How To Make It Easy & Palatable)

Organ meats are some of the most nutrients dense foods! But for some, the thought of actually preparing and eating them can be intimidating. Thankfully, there are really easy ways to add organ meats into your diet.

Tips for adding organ meats into your diet

Organ Blends

• Start with a ground organ blend. This is ground muscle meat with organ meats mixed in. It helps disguise the strong/distinct flavor of some organs and make it much more palatable. You can use ground blends to make burgers, lasagna, etc (anything that’d you’d use ground beef for).
  • When eating ground organ blends plain, I can taste a bit of the “organ” flavor, but its mild.
  • When I add raw cheese, spices, etc, to the ground blend I often can’t taste the difference at all.
  • Ground blends are a great way to get the nutrients of organ meats without having to prepare the organs separately. It also gives you a variety of nutrients from different organs. Many people say organ blends work really well for kids.
• Northstar Bison is an excellent source for ground organ blends. They have 100% grass-fed bison blends, beef blends, lamb blends, and corn & soy free pork blends. Their “old world blend” has 7 different organs in it (and it actually tastes amazing). You can use the code “RIBEYERACH” for a discount on any Northstar Bison order.
• Force of Nature Meats is another great source for ground organ blends (beef, bison, chicken, and venision). You can use this link for 10% off your order.

Organ Supplements

• Organ supplements are a great option for those that don’t want to (or aren’t ready to) cook organ meats.
• Most affordable high-quality organ supplements:
  • Paleovalley organ complex (use this link for 15% off)
    • These supplements are sourced from 100% grass-fed beef raised in the USA (from regenerative farms). Most other supplements come from New Zealand or South America. If you’re from the USA its great that they are more “local”.
    • Their organ blend consists of: liver, heart, and kidney
  • Perfect Supplements (use the code “RIBEYERACH” for 10% off)
    • They offer both grass-fed beef liver and an organ blend
    • My discount code “ribeyerach” can be combined with their “Buy 3 & Save” option, which ends up being around 30% off. This can be a huge savings, and is the cheapest I’ve seen beef liver supplements for!
  • One Earth Health (use the code “RIBEYE5” for a discount)
    • They offer grass-fed beef liver, organ blend, bone marrow, kidney, collagen, heart, trachea, and thymus.
    • Something I really like about One Earth Health supplements is that many of their more unique supplements are not blends (ex. the kidney supplements is 100% kidney), whereas most other brands add liver into all of their supplements.

Fresh Organs

• If you’re looking to eat fresh organs, I’d recommend starting with lamb, goat, or pork organs. They are milder in taste than beef organs.
• Some of the mildest tasting organs are heart and sweetbreads (thymus)
  • Heart tastes like a more “irony” steak. It really doesn’t have a strong taste like liver or kidney. This is a great fresh organ to start with. I like doing a typical “reverse sear” when cooking heart.
  • Thymus / sweetbreads actually does have a “sweet” taste to it. Its probably my favorite tasting organ (aside from heart). I like cooking them in the air fryer (it gives them a nice crisp).
•  Brain is actually quite mild tasting, too. Its the consistency of eggs, with a bit of a “fishy” taste (likely from all the omega 3s). Fry your brain up in some butter and add some raw cheese on top! It’ll taste delicious.
  • Brain is difficult to find, unfortunately. I haven’t been able to find a local source, but its always worth looking for. You can go to eatwild.com to find and get in contact with your local farmer.
  • Billydoe meats is a great place to order brain from (they have lamb, goat, and veal brain). Personally I’ve eaten brain from Billydoe and enjoyed it! Use the code “ribeyerach10” for a discount.
  • Northstar Bison sometimes has corn/soy free pork brain in stock! I haven’t gotten a chance to try it yet, but typically everything they offer is top quality. Use the code “ribeyerach” for a discount.
• Liver definitely has a strong taste. Personally, I prefer to eat liver raw than to cook it. If you’re going to do that, I’d recommend making sure it comes from a really trustworthy source and that its been frozen beforehand. I typically eat 3-4oz of raw liver a week.
• Kidney is my very least favorite organ to eat. It’s very strong and smells/tastes like urine to me. That’s why I choose to take desiccated supplements if I’m wanting to get the nutrients from kidney. I’m sure there are good ways to prepare kidney to improve the taste, I just prefer not to eat it.

Something to keep in mind about organ meats is that they are so nutrient dense, that sometimes very sensitive people (ex. someone healing from severe autoimmune disease) may get what’s called “die-off” reactions to eating them at first. If you’re at all concerned about that, just make sure to start slow. Just eat a very small amount, or if you’re trying organ capsules, start with just one capsule versus the full serving size.

Adding organs into my diet has made a big difference in my own healing journey. When I was really sick, I had to very slowly incorporate them. Now I eat them often and have seen lots of benefits from them!

To learn more about organ meats, visit this article from the Weston A Price Foundation. I’d also recommend reading “Deep Nutrition” by Dr. Cate Shannahan.