Offal Recipes: Nose to Tail Cooking

Jennifer McLagan's cookbook, Odd Bits, shares offal recipes for home cooks that taste better than they sound—as in her spicy Indian-style liver.

Chris Cosentino uses the phrase God's butter to describe rich, decadent bone marrow. Here he serves it alongside grilled toasts rubbed with rosemary and lemon. For a more potent herbal flavor, singe the rosemary sprigs on the grill for a few moments before rubbing the toasts.

This hors d'oeuvre is a Louisiana riff on traditional French chicken liver pâté. The Rushings create a silken mousse with livers from the quintessential American bird, turkey, but you can also use chicken livers. Instead of cornichons, the little French pickles, the Rushings add a sweet-and-tangy Southern accent–pickled shallots.

Andouille, a spicy sausage made from pork chitterlings and tripe, adds a wonderful smoky note to the sweet corn bread stuffing.

When prepared correctly, calf's liver can be absolutely amazing. This version is rich and crispy and served with a tangy salad of wax beans and frisée in a mustardy red wine vinaigrette.

Chris Cosentino of San Francisco's Incanto is known for his offal dishes but a hearty fish like sardine, served whole, can also appeal to the nose-to-tail crowd. Cosentino pan-fries the omega-3-rich fish with an exhilarating mix of olives, capers, lemon zest, parsley and chiles. To make this more of a main course, he prepares a crunchy salad of artichokes and sunchokes to eat alongside.

Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook spent a month perfecting their creamy chicken-liver mousse, topped with a jam of sweet sautéed shallots and balsamic vinegar.

For this dish, David Duband braises two cuts of beef—shank and rump roast—with marrow bones and then separately cooks leeks and carrots with more marrow bones until everything is deeply flavorful and tender. When serving, you can mix the horseradish with the sour cream to make a tasty garnish.

The rice vermicelli soup pho is a staple all over Vietnam and this spicy oxtail version is the specialty of Hanoi. At home in Connecticut, Marcia Kiesel often eats it for breakfast, as the Vietnamese do.

This carnivore's salad is filled with bold ingredients like bacon and pickled onion, but the star ingredient is chicken livers. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo soak the livers in buttermilk and coat them in flour, then repeat the process for extra-crispy results. "I'm into livers of all kinds now," says Dotolo, "especially duck and lamb."