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Mmm mmm mmm, love me some bison heart. Soooo delicious.
Cook it the same ways you would cook beef heart. If you've never cooked beef heart either then you should go online first to look up illustrated images and instructions on how to open it up to clean and trim the heart first. It's quick and easy to do but there's some dense fat on the outside and some sinewy connective tissue on the inside that should be trimmed off before cooking it. You'll recognize that the minute you see it and it's easy to remove. Just google "how to clean and cook bison heart" and you'll get information about that as well as for beef heart, plus numerous recipes.
The biggest difference between a beef heart and bison heart is the the bison heart is usually bigger and it has a slightly milder beefy flavour than beef heart does, but it is not gamey in any way. The heart meat is very lean and has a really fine, dense grain that almost makes it seem a bit chewie but it is not tough, it's quite tender (unless you over-cook it of course), and it's always best cooked medium rare for best flavour, tenderness and palatability.
Bison heart can be roasted whole or in cut up sections, grilled over the gas grill in whole sections or sliced thinly and grilled in a cast iron pan, BBQ'ed, cubed and stewed so it practically melts in your mouth (stewed as in beef stew), cooked whole or in slices in a crock pot/slow cooker, ground up and mixed with (or without) other kinds of ground meat for making burgers or meat pies - so choose which ever method you think you would feel most familiar with if you were cooking a big hunk of beef of the same weight and take it from there with a recipe and ingredients of your choosing. Just always remember, medium rare and not rare or medium or well done (especially not well done or you'll just destroy it).
After trimming it I always rub it down all over with a combined selection of seasonings, herbs, a tablespoon each of strong black coffee and balsamic vinegar and allow it to marinate like that overnight in the fridge first, and then I cook it the next day. I personally prefer to roast it in the oven or cook it in the slow cooker (because I am a lazy cook) and occasionally if it's just a small heart I will slice it thinly into strips and cook it quickly in butter in the skillet to have with sauteed mushrooms and fried eggs, or in the wok together with other stir fried ingredients. Also, roasted and then chilled sliced bison heart makes wonderful sandwich meat.
Thanks for the suggestions and advise! I've cooked caribou heart by cutting it into thin strips and using it in stir fry. That was good but I wanted to try something different this time. Also, the bison heart is much bigger than a caribou.
I'd go for either stuffed and roasted or else grind it fairly coarse and make a big pot of chili.
Heart makes great chili because it holds its shape, yet isn't tough. It's nice to eat chili that feels like you are getting a mouthful of meat that isn't sludge.
(I've got a crock pot full of pinto beans right now being cooked with maple smoked anchos. About 2 hours before it is done, I'll brown some hamburger and add that to the chili. That's long enough for the meat flavor to soak into the beans and not long enough for the burger to disintegrate. It's not bison heart, though)
Cook it like skirt steak, it is very rubbery if cooked wrong such as putting it in water too short. High heat short cooking and dice it to proper pieces allows for the fibers to get cooked quickly.
The best way I've had it is like Brazilian BBQ, over the fire grilled.
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