This post in my series on organ meats isn’t actually a recipe, it’s more of a review. We tried this beef head cheese from US Wellness Meats.
Whenever I hear the words “head cheese”, I think of this passage about butchering a hog from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book Little House in the Big Woods:
Little House in the Big Woods
Ma scraped and cleaned the head carefully, and then she boiled it till all the meat fell off the bones. She chopped the meat fine with her chopping knife in the wooden bowl, she seasoned it with pepper and salt and spices. Then she mixed the pot-liquor with it, and set it away in a pan to cool. When it was cool it would cut in slices, and that was headcheese.
This beef head cheese isn’t exactly like that. It is made from beef heart, beef tongue, and beef trim. Beef trim is simply the small pieces of beef leftover after cutting the steaks, roasts, etc. from the beef carcass. Trim is generally used as stew meat, ground beef, or sausages.
Heart contains high amounts of iron and CoQ10, which is great for heart health and longevity. It contains nearly twice as much collagen and elastin as other beef muscle meat. These are excellent for skin health and can help with wrinkles and sagging skin. Heart also contains folate, selenium, lycopene, phosphorus, zinc and several B vitamins.
Eating beef tongue is a part of eating “nose-to-tail”. Making sure that none of the animal goes to waste is more ethical than eating only your favorite parts and discarding the rest. Beef tongue contains folate, selenium, iron, potassium, niacin, phosphorus and zinc.
On it’s own, the head cheese tasted ok. I expected it to be more heavily seasoned than it was. It’s texture was also softer than I expected. However, when we added it to sandwiches with keto bread, lettuce, and cheese we really enjoyed it.
