You bought a whole animal be it beef, lamb, goat or pork, or you are raising small stock, rabbit, or fowl and you find yourself with a heart or hearts. i have a number of heart recipes in the recipe section of the blog.

Today however we are going to talk about the best way to get your family to eat them if they don’t “like” seeing it in its heart form and that is grind it and mix it with burger/minx of your choice and make burgers for the freezer, future dinners and fast BBQ’s

First though lets talk about why you should be adding it to your menu

Beef hearts are loaded with nutrients to keep your body healthy, including iron, protein, selenium, and zinc. It is pretty low in fat compared to other cuts of beef, with approximately 4 grams of fat per 3-ounce serving. 

This organ meat also contains a substantial amount of complex B vitamins, like folate, riboflavin, and Vitamin B-12, that protect against heart disease and naturally improve energy levels.

Those who live with anemia may want to consume beef hearts to aid their Vitamin B-12 deficiency, this one really matters to me as one of Hubby’s med’s can make him low on this much needed B-12!

Cut up your ideally Grass Fed local Beef heart and then grind it to match the grind on the burger meat you are using.

Now, that is long yearling grass fed ground beef, its coming on over a year in the freezer but its excellent condition and look at the difference between it and the ground heart from the same animal, if you are following the rules on these things, its a straight 80/20. I don’t know why, i just know that book after book after book tells me that you should use 20 ground heart to 80 percent ground meat to get a mix that NO ONE can tell they are eating heart in there, while still getting some of the health add in on the final product.

However, that a book and i like the way heart tastes, i am not trying to hide it, i am just trying to turn its looks different, from that above to the below!

Now to be fair, if i was going to only use the heart, i would have run it though the grinder one more time on a finer setting but knowing i was doing the blend, i didn’t mind at all that this was a bit course.

I added one large onion, 4 peeled and prepped garlic cloves to each batch, but its not needed, if you have health or other reasons to not be eating those.

I made two batches, each one made 12 burger in different flavors, one batch was Montreal steak spice and the other was more herb based, its a blend i get from out west, called Veggie seasoning LOL Its like a Mrs. Dash but with salt and turmeric in it

If you wanted to make these go further and get more volume on the most frugal side, you could grind in a half to a full cup of oatmeal to each batch, or spend a bit more and add bread crumbs. Once you have the grind and blend together, you can follow your families preferred seasoning and way of making your burgers

Layer between their wax paper round into stacks of four each, they have been frozen flat, stacked and into freezer bags or tubs, I am still reducing my use of plastic by using my freezer mates over and over and over and over again, and hopefully for MANY more years to come, so far i have not lost a single one to cracking to date.

The burgers can be snapped off the stack to have a single one but most often i will just grab a pack of four and put in the fridge for future meal use

So if you find a good deal on heart in the store, if you need more B12, if you got a whole animal and wonder how to use those hearts in a way that everyone will eat it, this is the a good thing!