Deer Hearts

Chicken fried some deer hearts tonight. Double dipped in flour and eggs mix. The best thing since sliced bread. Can't believe I have been getting rid of them inhe past.

Love them for breakfast. Chicken fried with eggs, biscuits and gravy.

I watched a chef on a tv hunting show back in the ‘80’s cook deer heart. He show how to de-valve it. I never tried it. Was it tender?

I always save all of my deer hearts and everybody elses that I hunt with. They are great chicken fried or sauteed in butter with eggs.

If you have several, they make good fajitas too. They're just so small though. I will freeze them until I've accumulated anough to feed a few people.

When I first moved to Texas and started hunting, I couldn’t believe all the horrified faces when I cut the heart out of a whitetail doe and started cleaning it. Since I’m originally from South America, it became the running joke with my hunting buddies to “give the ‘farner’ the heart, he eats that stuff”. I was happy to take them and often had a dozen whitetail, axis and blackbuck hearts in my game freezer. Then I got too smart for my own good and made it a point to cook heart every time we went hunting (different recipes). By the following season, I realized the number of donated hearts had dropped considerably, and now I barely get to eat the ones off of my own kills! Once you get past the initial hesitation and learn how to cook it, venison heart is fantastic and I promise you, you’ll never scoff at them again.

My favorite venison heart recipe is “Heart Taquitos Al Pastor”. I usually clean the hearts (cutting off the connective tissue), then pat it dry and cut it into small cubes. It helps if the meat is semi-frozen when you’re cutting it. One heart is enough for 2 hungry hunters.

1. Sprinkle liberally with a good dry rub that’s heavy on the chili powder (or you can fortify your favorite blend with some extra ancho chile powder), and let the meat marinade for a day or two.

2. Combine a small container of sour cream with one diced fresh jalapeño, a handful of fresh cilantro, salt and pepper. Blend them together, then put the mixture back in the sour cream container and leave it in the fridge or cooler (I usually do this ahead of time).

3. Finely dice a big yellow or white onion, and do the same with two or three slices of fresh pineapple (that’s been patted dry to take the excess moisture off).

4. On a hot grill (a hot skillet will do in a pinch), throw some corn or HEB “Mitad y Mitad” tortillas until they puff up and get some grill marks. Take them off, stack ‘em, and cover them with a kitchen towel (or put ‘em in a tortilla warmer if you have one)

5. On a cast iron skillet, sauté the onion in a mixture of butter and vegetable oil at high temperature, until it’s nicely caramelized. Take it out and let it sit on a paper plate. Do the same thing with the pineapple, letting it caramelize. Set it aside on another paper plate.

6. On the same skillet, sauté the heart meat at very high temperature so it browns. This step won’t take more than a few minutes, you don’t want to overcook the meat.

7. Stack the meat, grilled onions and pineapple on a fresh tortilla, and sliced avocados and some of the cilantro “crema”.

8. Eat up!

I beg to differ! I cooked up some deer heart guiso last night, and 3 hearts fed two hungry guys. I always save hearts the whole season, and then have a feast at the end of the season. I've done chicken fried, guiso, and fajitas. I'll probably try your recipe next year.

Last year I grilled 3 axis hearts over mesquite coals with just a little dry rub on them, cut them up into strips and passed them around at a party with toothpicks. Never mentioned what it was, everyone raved about them and they disappeared in minutes. It was fun to see people's faces when I told him what it was!

That sounds good! Been killing and eating deer my whole life and still have never tried deer heart or liver, and I love liver. I need to try! Not sure why I haven't yet.

If you like chicken gizzards, you will love deer hearts.

I'm not real big on gizzards, but I love chicken livers.

I used to save the deer liver too. Problem is, there is just so much blood in there, that I't really hard to get enough of it out for the deer liver to taste good, and deer liver is a little bit tougher than chicken livers. Try the Heart. You might like it.

I love hearts...

Fried chicken hearts are the bomb....mom and I used to fight over them...

deer hearts are the bomb diggity - head shots only gentlemen

I actually cooked one the other night in some butter and garlic for some friends who had never tried it and they gobbled it up; weren't too happy when I told them what it was but they all agreed it was one of the more tasty things they've eaten