Sweetbread

Sweetbreads or ris are culinary names for the thymus (throat, gullet, or neck sweetbread) or the pancreas (heart, stomach, or belly sweetbread) especially of the calf (ris de veau) and lamb (ris d’agneau) (although beef and pork sweetbreads are also eaten).^[1] Various other glands used as food are also called ‘sweetbreads’, including the parotid gland (“cheek” or “ear” sweetbread), the sublingual glands (“tongue” sweetbreads or “throat bread”), and testicles (cf. Rocky Mountain oyster).^[2][3] The “heart” sweetbreads are more spherical in shape, and surrounded symmetrically by the “throat” sweetbreads, which are more cylindrical in shape.

One common preparation of sweetbreads involves soaking in salt water, then poaching in milk, after which the outer membrane is removed. Once dried and chilled, they are often breaded and fried. They are also used for stuffing or in pâtés. They are grilled in many Latin American cuisines, such as in the Argentine asado, and served in bread in Turkish cuisine.

The word “sweetbread” is first attested in the 16th century, but the logic behind the name is unclear.^[4] “Sweet” is perhaps used since the thymus is sweet and rich tasting, as opposed to savory tasting muscle flesh.^[5] “Bread” may come from brede ‘roasted meat’.[

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Well, there you have the Wikipedia version of Sweet Breads.  Here is mine!

Fat Duck once went to a grocery store meat counter and asked the manager, “Do you have any sweet breads?”  and the manager replied, “Just a minute I’ll page the bakery!”  Fat Duck knew right away he wasn’t going to get any sweet breads from that store.

I special order my sweet breads from a local butcher shop.  They know exactly what sweet breads are made from and it takes a few weeks for them to get a bunch gathered up.  It seems that beef cattle, where I insist mine come from, only have a smallish amount per animal and so it takes a few to get a couple of pounds worth.  Well anyway, who cares about that, what we want is some raw sweetbreads (notice I’ve changed it to a one word thing).

Take the sweetbreads and place them in a boiling pan with water enough that they are floating in it.  Then dump in a full bottle of lemon juice (you can use vinegar if you want).  It’s the acid in juice or vinegar that is going to do the work for you.  Boil it up for about a half hour.  Once boiled you are going to have to cool the whole bundle down really quick.  So prepare a large metal pan, small cooler or something like that with water and ice in it.

When the pot of boiling sweetbreads is done cooking, drain it quickly through a colander, you know one of those things that looks sort of like a bowl, and it has a million holes in it.  And then from the colander dump the sweetbreads in your ice water and let it sit until it is cold.

By the way, I hope you are reading this before you attempt to do this task, because it does take quite awhile to get it done.  It is very much worth all the effort in my opinion, else I wouldn’t do it.

When it is cold, the work begins.

Using just your fingers, start to peel the little glands out of the membrane that surrounds them.  Some of the glands will be smaller than a green pea, while others maybe as large as a strawberry, but there a a bunch of them in a pound.  Sometimes this takes upwards of an hour to accomplish.  You will end up with quite a pile of membrane throw away stuff, but you will also have a pile of good old ready to cook up sweetbreads as well.

Rinse off the sweetbreads and set them aside to drain.  Now clean the sink, cooler or whatever you chilled the sweetbread in.  Wipe it first with a couple of paper towels because there is a rather thick layer of greasy gunk all around the outside and bottom.

To cook the sweetbreads, get a plastic bag and put some flour in it, then season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder etc. to taste.  Then dump the whole lot of sweetbreads into the bag and shake it up real good, to coat the sweetbreads all around.

Heat up some vegetable or peanut oil in a frying pan and then carefully put in enough sweetbreads to cover the bottom of the pan.  As they brown up, stir them around and keep this up until they are nice a brown all around.  Now take them out of the pan and place on a paper towel to drain a bit.

Those babies are ready to eat!

Often times we will cook up a pan while deer hunting or camping and then set the pan out and give all the participants a toothpick.  Every one sits around munching on sweetbreads and loving life.  I don’t know of anyone who does not like the final product.  I do know a few that don’t want to do the task to get to that final product, but who enjoy the end result.

In the Wikipedia definition above, they mention another way of preparing for the removal of the membrane and I think I’ll try that way the next time I get some sweetbreads from the butcher.

Enjoy!

Bears Butt

June 21, 2011