What are your "must order" dishes/ingredients at any restaurants?

More for y’all :wink:

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The chicken heart discussion reminds me of one of my favorite orders, if I know/trust the chef, veal kidneys. Seared and sauteed only until a pink interior, they are sweet and tender… Longer, they are tough and strong flavored. Madiera or marsala doesn’t hurt.

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I LOVE those. Used to be able to get them in local supermarkets when I lived in Worcester. Can’t get them in Waltham. Boo. (For Massachusetts folks)

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My mom used to make ‘sour’ veal kidneys in cream sauce when I grew up. Really delicious. Not sure what kind of acid she used, but it was a savory, slightly tart gravy that usually included mushrooms as well. Served over rice or potatoes.

Last time I ordered veal kidneys at a traditional German place in Berlin, I got a whole tureen of it. It smelled like a pissoir, unfortunately, and I could only finish a small amount :frowning:

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Kidneys are one of those things where I feel like I have to make them at home. I have never ordered them out.

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Maybe wine?

Nah, Churrascaria Plataforma safely counts as Hells Kitchen :joy:.

I know what you mean about needing to fast to eat there. Fogo’s salad bar + 1 meat option sounds more like the amount I can do justice to these days!

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It was the only meat, besides a few leftover scraps off the bones used to make the soup. I do prefer hearts and livers to gizzards, but I’m using those suckers. When I was wee you could get hearts for $.80 a lb. I bought plenty. Gizzards are a little less nice to eat; but I’ll eat them, around the middle.

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Chef made a crucial mistake. You gotta cook the piss out of 'em. Your mom could give some pointers.

She could if she weren’t dealing with dementia. I’d ask, otherwise.

Best wishes for your mom and you and other caregivers; it can be an extremely tough path. In my father’s case, it was a most benign sort.

He had to give away his beloved dogs when it was finally obvious that he needed full-time care in a residence facility. Every few hours a large, talking German Shepherd would come visit with him and they’d “talk about old times”.

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Thanks. She’s still capable of living alone, but that could change quickly. She’s been seeing “little men” beneath her window :confused:

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I have a similar dilemma. Hope you’re good.

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Kidneys is not that unusual for Chinese-style hot pot. My mom would alway buy some but none of the kids would eat it precisely because it still smelled pissy! Yuck. I’ve eaten most offal and various organ meats, but kidney is universally the one thing I cannot stand. In all fairness when chitlins/intestines are not cleaned well, it’s pretty off-putting for me, but I’ve at least had some decent preparations. I’m not sure I like the texture though.



I rarely see veal of any sort around here anymore, and don’t think I’ve ever seen veal kidneys, which I understand are more mild than for grown beef.

I did try - once and only once - regular beef kidneys just on a lark because they were only about $0.65/lb. I followed a Vietnamese noodle recipe, which as stated called for long boiling to remove the urates or whatever. I was the only one in the house who could eat it - and at that, only just barely and really only because I’d cooked the damned dish so I felt like I had to eat a serving of it.

I’m still willing to try it professionally prepared (and probably better sourced than my local grocer), but I’m not going to try it at home again.

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My mom would buy pork kidneys. Her thing though was that the kidneys still needed to have a bit of snap, so she sliced them thinner (hence hotpot style!) a quick blanch to just cook it through. Yeah, that definitely removes none of that funk. :face_vomiting:

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My mom would buy veal or lamb ones for broiling as part of what she called “mixed grill” (her family is British and Scottish). We were fortunate in that she never made ones that smelled of urine (I think she did a lot of soaking before hand), but the texture was challenging when I was a kid.

And, now that I like them, they are not readily available in the supermarket anymore. The beef ones are, but I haven’t worked with those.

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I would suggest an Asian/Chinese market if you are close enough to one, but don’t think I’ve ever seen veal or veal kidneys. You probably can find the pork kidneys readily, and maybe beef.

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I had leek and kidney with a meal I enjoyed on the Isle of Mull. I can’t remember the main dish, but the kidney was only slightly gamey, not a bad dish at all. I finished mine, saw my girlfriend didn’t have one on her plate any more, so I asked her, “How did you like the sausage?”
She looked at me, lifted one eyebrow, and said “It isn’t a sausage and it is on your plate now.” And so it was.
The leek was actually a bigger deal. I swear my sweat smelled like death for 2 days. I don’t think it was the kidney, the owner of the B&B said it happened to some people that ate leeks. It would have been nice to know that before I ate the leeks. I had to sleep on the couch for two days…

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I grew up next to two survivors of the Armenian holocaust. They made more stuff out of kidneys. Takes all day but, as Arshag always said, " the key to making good kidneys is to cook the piss out of ‘em." God, I hated that smell. All frickin’ day.

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