Flora Phillips - the power of offal
We spoke with Flora, a chef, butcher, and the founder of 'Floffal,' to discuss all things offal
Why do you love offal?
Offal is vital to the livestock and meat we consume, and it is therefore essential for the work of butchers and chefs. It’s a powerful, symbolic, raw material that is both versatile and inspiring to work with. I believe the challenges it presents, be it in terms of flavour, cooking techniques, or customer reception, provide us the opportunity to become better, more emboldened chefs, and gives us the confidence to source and cook with other unusual ingredients.
Offal precisely embodies the life of the animal lived. This, for many, is the main point of contention and dismissal but it’s my view that this is the very thing we should be embracing.
To be on par in ‘parts’ with an animal, to share in something so vital, is profound. Each animal is different, and just as the muscles (‘meat’) reveal, offal showcases the quality and care of each stage in the process of meat production, which both chef and customer are becoming increasingly aware of today. Offal has the scope to give people access to exceptional produce and provide them with a humbling experience.
I just think it's completely beautiful: multi-sensory, multi-faceted, fun, and a real privilege to create with.
Why should chefs eat/use more offal?
Creative: Offal is considered ‘challenging’ or ‘exceptional’ in terms of ‘meat’ and this can actually propel us to challenge ourselves to use our ingredients in new ways in terms of method, process and designing of dishes.
Ethical: With meat, (and arguably all ingredients), it’s essential that, given the access to information and luxury of choice most of us have, we consume with an awareness of and respect to the living, breathing, feeling animal that has been farmed and slaughtered to provide for us. Using the whole animal encompasses this.
Flavour: For me, offal is uniquely dense and impactful in delivering on both flavour and texture. It’s so visceral and variable from part to part and I find its bold flavours help inspire the choices of other ingredients to create a whole dish. In the same way chefs can indulge in investigating different breeding and husbandry through the results of cooking prime cuts, they can discover even more through cooking with and tasting their offal.
Financial: With a few exceptions (detailed below), offal is a fraction of the cost of many meat cuts.
Sustainable: Simply put, fewer animals need to be reared if more people eat offal. A recent German study found that increased offal consumption could reduce the country's meat-related emissions by up to 14%.
Nutritional: Gram for gram, many offal items have been proven to be the most nutrient-dense meat source we have, particularly the internal vital organs, which are a condensed source of protein - essential for tissue and muscle repair throughout our bodies.
Heart is rich in 3 of the B Vitamins, all of which have sustained cardioprotective effects. I.e. a healthy animal heart is good for your heart!
Tripe contains significant portions of a micronutrient called selenium, which acts as an antioxidant to protect us against chronic disease, cell damage, and helps promote immune and cognitive function.
Liver is packed with iron and Vitamin B12, both of which combine to promote red blood cell health and function. As a butcher I’ve often had requests for ox liver from customers with chronic illnesses.
How can we get more chefs using offal?
Exposure to the whole animal :
I have the privilege of being deeply involved in the process of sourcing i.e. carving and cutting ‘meat’ ingredients. Some chefs don’t get that level of access, and I think if they did, they’d be able to see that their meat is one part of an entire animal, rather than an individual protein ingredient, and therefore consider in their cooking the fuller scope of the whole animal. I don’t believe we should expect chefs to have the capacity to butcher a whole animal in house, but trips to sites where animals are grown and processed would be really beneficial to generate a more holistic approach to sourcing and consuming meat. Alternatively, butchers/meat suppliers could go into the chefs' workplace and have a discussion/present their line of work, day-to-day processes, breeds, etc. to the staff, and learn for themselves where their produce is going and how it is used in kitchen settings.
Re-homogenising offal-as-meat:
Taking this view will re-invigorate offal as a truly valid, even celebratory, aspect of meat-eating. These are vital parts and organs for the animal, and I think there is great opportunity here to be humbled, precisely because we share in many of the living, breathing, feeling experiences of these animals. It is a privilege to have this level of recognition and intimacy with the ingredient, and I think if we can consider offal, then meat, and therefore the animal, we can prosper from a healthy sense of responsibility and connection, which translates through the quality, narrative and processes of our cooking.
Many chefs might not feel confident using offal, where’s a good place to start?
Start with Heart:
I often begin introducing offal to people through ways that really exemplify it as the meat we’re more used to eating. Heart is excellent for this - one of the most versatile and ‘meaty’ of the internal organs. Like the prime cuts we so often use, the heart is one big muscle, so behaves in much the same way.
Beef/sheep heart doesn’t have a strong mineral ‘offaly’ flavour and is so adaptive to a whole variety of cooking methods: roasting, pan-frying, tartare, cured, bbq’d… it can deliver it all, at a fraction of the price of prime cuts and with an abundance of flavour and nutrition.
Make an offal sausage:
A familiar and much loved meat product! Combine offal with trim from usual carcass butchery, oats, seasoning and alcohol of choice!
What to look in the quality of Offal items:
Remember you can always speak to your supplier/butcher for advice.
Heart: It is quite natural to see some burst blood vessels in a heart, for example - it's a natural reaction to slaughter. If this is significant and throughout the heart, though (purple-y cracks or blotches through the meat), then it might be a little more tough. It shouldn't affect the flavour, though.
Liver and kidneys: They should have a notable tension to them, and be deep, rich and glossy in colour and appearance. They should smell irony, but with a subtle dark-fruitiness to them. If it seems diluted in colour, more floppy and inconsistent in internal structure, or smells sour then it's not good for cooking.
Kidneys will, eventually, just turn very dark and sometimes grey-green around the nodules if left too long - avoid these.
Can chefs save money using offal?
Absolutely.
An entire ox liver, for example, can be around 5-6 kgs. It is so incredibly nutrient, protein, and flavour-rich, and if you buy one whole you get so much out of it.
There are a few items, such as sweetbreads, that can be pricey. This tends to be due to them being sourced from abroad, and due to the additional task, time (and therefore, cost) it takes retrieving them at an abattoir or butchers.
Some abattoirs do not have the facilities or licensing/controls to store or process animals’ offal when they are slaughtered. So, things like brains sometimes cannot be handled/processed/contained because of licensing, health & safety, or simply because the site will not or cannot employ someone to do the specific job. This last point can be a case for any offal item, it really depends site-to-site. Research, relationships and respect is key.
