Offal Good

Where To Buy Guts..

Where do I get these meats? That’s the question I’m asked most often. It’s amazing that what used to be available in every butcher shop are now considered hard-to-find specialty items, but that’s another story. To start with, I can give you a list of places in the Bay Area as well as a few mail order spots where you can get offal. For those folks outside the Bay Area, I suggest you do two things: 1. if you’re lucky enough to have a local butcher shop, ask them. They may not have guts on hand, but they can probably order them for you. 2. Check out the “ethnic” markets in your area; Chinese, Latino and Filipino markets (and probably others I’m not familiar with) usually have offal in their meat section. The following list is by no means complete; it’s just a starting point. Now go get some guts and start cooking. And add your favorite retail spots for offal in the comments section below and we’ll compile a more complete list so that someday soon everyone, everywhere can bring home some guts for dinner. Continue reading Where To Buy Guts…..

Whole Fish

Just today in the San Francisco Chronicle in their new feature called “Chef’s Night In” I give a recipe for cooking whole fish and talk about why its better to cook fish on the bone. I know it dosent talk about offal but it goes back to the whole animal idea of not being afraid of your food. There is also a podcast (

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) where I talk about offalgood, eating innards and why whole animal eating is sustainable. Continue reading Whole Fish…

USDA Hog Slaughter

This past january i went to Iowa for a meat seminar at Iowa State University Meat Labratories, and on the last day they were harvesting 4 hogs. As you can see in the photos this is done like precision clockwork, each person knows their job and it is done quickly and respectfully. All the while it is done under the close eye of a USDA inspector. Continue reading USDA Hog Slaughter…

You Gotta Have Guts

This is the title of the article that was written in the Stanford alumni magazine . Since Mark Pastore, Incanto’s owner, is a graduate they wanted to do a feature and decided to focus on how we serve offal at the restaurant, and why. So in they came with pen and paper in hand to document their dinner along with a few interviews. Take a look here to read the article. Continue reading You Gotta Have Guts…

Required Offal Reading

People often ask me; “where did you learn to cook with offal, what restaurant did you work at that served these types of meats?”. And my answer is that I was fed a lot of these meats as a child and mostly didn’t like them. But after I became a cook I wanted to know more about those “strange” things that great-grandma used to make. So I started looking for recipes and info about offal and over the years have acquired lots of cool books. There are also a few very familar cokbooks out there that have some offal sections or recipes in them. Here’s my list of recommended reading for those curious about offal. I will include as many as I can remember. Continue reading Required Offal Reading…