Have you ever tried beef heart? This slow cooker beef heart recipe is the perfect place to start! You’ll love it! After all, the heart is just another muscle.
I love using inexpensive cuts of beef. One of the best ways to keep the meat bill down is to use cheap, less popular cuts and organ meats. This slow cooker beef heart recipe makes it easy, and, it’s a naturally gluten-free recipe!
We don’t actually sell our beef hearts, because heart is Gabriel’s favorite part. He sells the choice steaks and eats the heart. Is that backward, or what? But really, heart is a muscle, just like other meat, it’s not funny tasting like liver, so it’s not a big leap from using beef roast, to beef heart in recipes.
Having kept the hearts from several cows last year, I was able to do some experimenting and find our favorite ways to cook it. This recipe has withstood the test of time, and we’ve made it again and again with each beef we process. We even purchase beef hearts from our friends after they process their own!
Not surprisingly, this slow cooker beef heart recipe took the top spot. I love being able to throw ingredients into a pot, and let it babysit itself until I’m ready to serve it for dinner.
Hearts tend to have quite a bit of fat on them, which you can save and render into homemade tallow. I usually freeze the fat, and save it until I’m ready to render a larger batch of tallow.
This slow cooker beef heart dish is perfect served over a bed of rice, to soak up the juices from cooking in the crockpot, and then top it with homemade sauerkraut. We like to serve with a side of salad, or steamed broccoli and thyme roasted sweet potatoes.
Slow Cooker Beef Heart Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 beef heart (approximately 1 pound)
- 1/4 t. pepper
- 1/2 t. salt
- 1/4 t. garlic powder
- 1/2 t. dried oregano
- 1/2 an onion, sliced
Instructions
- Prepare beef heart by trimming fat, and dicing into one inch cubes. How much time you want to take to devein is up to you. I find that once the meat is cooked, the veins are pretty much indistinguishable, so I don’t like waste much time on this part.
- Toss into slow cooker, and sprinkle with pepper, salt, garlic powder, and oregano. Stir to coat beef cubes.
- Top with slices onions.
- Cook on high for 4-6 hours.
- Serve over steamed rice, or quinoa
, or for a more low carb dish, riced cauliflower.
- Enjoy!
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When you add the heart to the crockpot is there any sort of cooking fat/liquid you would add? Ive never used heart before so I wasn’t sure if it would excret any sort of liquid on its own, I’d hate for it to stick to my crock pot haha.
No, I didn’t add any, The juices from the heart collect in the crockpot as it cooks, and I’ve found that to be enough without getting soggy. 🙂
I recently read that in some cultures (hunter-gatherer types, I think), people used to eat the organs and discard the muscle meats, or feed them to their dogs. So they would think we were weird for eating dog food! Also, I just read a Chinese saying, “Eat the part you want to heal.” Seems like we Americans should be eating a LOT more heart! Thanks for the recipe–it sure looks easy! But I think I’ll need a BIT more than 1/2 tsp. salt. =) I use good salt and am pretty generous with it. Or is this a meat that shouldn’t be salted till afterward, to avoid affecting the texture? I’ve read such contradictory things about that.
Hi Diane! So interesting! I wonder if they preferred the more pungent flavor of the organ meats, because if you think about it, their food would probably have otherwise been pretty bland!
I tend to salt pretty lightly so that everyone can salt to their own preferences afterward. My husband and I like fairly heavy salt, but the kids not so much, so use as much salt as you prefer!
I have read that adding salt directly to raw meat can cause it to be dry, but I haven’t actually experienced that personally.
That is correct….in our culture we have gotten away from eating organ meats but they contain a lot of nutrients we don’t get from muscle meat, which only offers protein for the most part. And I have read the same thing, that you should eat the part you wish to heal in your own body. Anyway, I recently purchased beef heart and want to start eating foods with more nutrition and this recipe looks pretty good to me, will be trying it soon!
Late response… my grandmother always prepared liver and other organ dishes with grits.. today I prepared Cow Heart in a mushroom and onion brown gravy cooked tender.. my Kids Loves it… until I told them it was cow heart😂
Years ago I copied a recipe from a friends crock-pot cookbook on a pickled heart… It was very tasty and very close to the pickled heart my father would make…. He would also cook the beef tongue in a pickling spice and then skin the tongue after it was cooked & slice these for sandwich meat…. I’ve since lost this recipe and have looked for years for it with no such luck… Never thought of it till I saw this post… Maybe I can find it again on the Internet… Thanks!!!
I have found a tongue recipe like that in a cookbook called Long Way On A Little
Lisa did you ever find that pickled heart recipe? I’d love for you to share it. Thanks. I’d like any recipes like that… You mentioned pickled tongue? Please share.
No liquid?
Nope. Although it won’t hurt to add it, your finished dish will be a bit more soggy if you do.
These are phenomenal! I buy these all of the time, since they are super cost efficient, yet have the taste of a nice cut piece of steak. They have a very light liver taste, which is overpowered by the nice rich buttery taste of any steak. I cook my beef hearts in pasta dishes from pasta salads, yak (lo mein), to gravy with egg noodles and in a tomato sauce. ????????
Sounds delicious! thank you for sharing. 🙂
I love beef heart. My mother used to cook it when I was a child in the 40’s/50’s and her recipe included concentrated orange juice. She sliced the meat very thinly, and called it Mock Duck – much nicer than the other Mock Duck recipes which used sausagemeat or pulses.
I use my slow cooker, thinly sliced heart with onions, carrots and slices of whole orange, oregano and thyme.
That sounds delicious! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
There is no added liquid in this recipe?
Disregard my question I didn’t see the other comments thank you.
Easy and delicious, moving towards hour 6 on high. The meat gets increasingly tender and the broth more flavorful. Thank you
I added 1/2 water and put it into the slow cooker…. Boy, is it smellin’ good! Thank you!!
I’ve been making beef heart roast for quite a while &my family really likes it.
Here’s the recipe:
–beef heart (No need to cut off fat or Devin! It’s just a waste of time, as it All melts away in the cooking process)
–2 Tbs. Beef bullion
–1 tsp. of each: seasoned salt, garlic powder &
onion powder.
–1/2 tsp. of pepper
Put all in crock pot. Cover with water. This will not make it soggy, but tender! Let it cook on Low for 6 hours.
**I like to add potatoes to the beef heart. ( I love stewed potatoes!)
I am trying this this tomorrow!