How to Cook Beef Heart in the Instant Pot

The Instant pot is a great way to cook your beef heart and make this tough meat super tender and delicious! Like any other tough cut of meat you may get from the meat department, this just needs to be cooked low and slow to make it nice and tender. In this case, an Instant Pot, cooking it with water and high pressure.

I know this isn’t the usual cut of meat that we are used to getting from the grocery store but it is just as good, if not even healthier for us. Heart meat is also a great addition to your diet if you are on the carnivore diet.  

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Where to Buy Beef Heart

Most likely you will need to find a local butcher or a local farmer. Grocery stores don’t usually carry this type of meat. Though I occasionally find different cuts like ox tail and liver more commonly, heart is not one of them. Beef heart is not a common cut of meat that people are looking for. If you are unable to find beef heart near you you can check out US Wellness Meats. 

What is the texture of Beef Heart

Beef heart is much like a steak but with a more rich beef flavor. Though, it is not as tender as a steak, it is much firmer. This is where using your pressure cooker or slow cooker comes in hand. This is a great start if someone is wanting to get started with getting more organ meats into their diet. Especially since it’s taste and texture is more similar to a steak than other organs like beef kidneys or liver. 

How to eat Beef Heart

The most common way I find is to just eat it as is once cooked and still warm or cut some slices and fry it on the stove a bit. I used to cut the raw heart into chunks and fry it in a cast iron skillet with some melted fat and eat it like a steak. Although a bit tough this way, it’s doable.

You can also take your cooked heart meat and shred or cut it into small pieces and add it to your stew like you would any other cut of beef and call it beef heart stew. Use it in any other meat-based recipes that you like to make.

In the Book Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon suggests grinding it up and mixing it in with your ground beef as an easy way to add it to almost any meat-based recipe for your whole family to get the health benefits.

Another great way to add raw beef hearts to your diet is to make it into some assembled kebab skewers, you could even add in a small piece of beef liver (about 0.5 oz) and cook that over your grill. 

What are the Health Benefits of Beef heart

There are many health benefit of eating beef heart. Some of the important nutrients that you get from it are: 

• Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) 
• Iron
• Zinc
• Selenium
• B2 (Riboflavin)
• B6 (Pyridoxine)
• B9 (Folate)
• B12 (Cobalamin)

The heart of a cow is very high in B Vitamins and CoQ10 which is very beneficial for your own heart health as well as the rest of your body. Here is a good source about the benefits of CoQ10

As well as this source on beef and heart disease among other things from The Weston A. Price Foundation. 

It’s the Beef

In the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon she talks a lot about getting more organ meats into you and your families diet.

How to Prepare Beef heart for the Instant Pot

If you acquire your heart meat frozen, you can thaw it in it’s package in some cold water or leave it in a dish to thaw in the fridge. You can cook it frozen but you will have to increase your cooking time.

Some people may say to remove all the strings and other connective tissue from the muscle meat but that just removes beneficial parts of the heart. Since you are slow cooking this muscle meat, all those things will be tender and hardly noticeable once cooked.

Other sources will say to remove excess fat from the outside of the heart. I do not recommend doing this as this is already a very lean muscle meat that you want to keep as much of the fat that you can. The more fat that is there, the better the health benefits to you as well as the flavor benefits.

Sometimes you may find what is called Silver Skin on your muscle meat. It is a silvery connective tissue that is very tough and unfortunately does not break down during the cooking process. So if you happen to see any of that, you may want to remove that without removing too much of the meat. 

Cooking Beef Heart

There are different ways of cooking beef heart. If you find that you do not have an Instant Pot you can use a slow cooker, just put it on low heat and cook for 6-8 hours. If you don’t have a slow cooker either, you can cook it on low heat in a stock pot covered with filtered water on your stove and keep an eye on it throughout the day.

What do you need to make Beef Heart in the Instant Pot

• An Instant Pot or other brand of pressure cooker
• Raw beef hearts or even Veal Hearts
• Filtered Water or Bone Broth  
• Salt
• Any add ins you may want, veggies like a sliced onion, celery, carrots, etc.

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How to Cook Beef Heart in the Instant Pot

• Once the pieces of beef heart are thawed, put the stainless steel insert in the instant pot and add the meat to the insert.
• Add 1 cup of filtered water or bone broth on top of the meat.
• Add your sliced onion or any other vegetables cut into smaller pieces (optional)
• Put the lid on the Instant Pot and turn the valve to “Seal”
• Press the “Pressure Cook” button and set the pressure to “High” 
• Set the time to cook for 75 minutes and press start if your brand of pressure cooker has that feature.
• Once the timer goes off and it has finished cooking, allow the pressure to naturally release for 30 minutes. Doing this step helps to make it more tender.
• Remove the meat from the instant pot, and allow to cool on a cutting board. (Don’t throw out the liquid in the instant pot insert. There are many nutrients left in that from the heart. Use it in your other beef recipes like beef stew.)
• Once cooled you can slice the meat into thick or thin slices as you please. If you want to serve it like this, that is fine or add it to your favorite dish. 

How to Make Crispy Beef Heart

If you like your meat to be a bit more crispy, here’s what I recommend. After you have sliced the meat into about 1″ – 2″ thick slices, and add it to a preheated cast iron pan. Sear it in some healthy fat, you could do olive oil but I prefer to use an animal fat like butter or rendered beef fat like tallow. Cook it like you would a steak but not quite as long since it is already cooked, you don’t want to dry it out. It needs to be cooked long enough so that it gets crispy on the bottom before you flip it to the other side. Serve it with some sauerkraut to help with your immune system and some steamed vegetables, delicious!

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• The Berky Filter I Use
• My Cast Iron Pan I have 2 this size
• My 6 quart Instant Pot I like this one because it has the yogurt function. I love making my Raw milk Greek Yogurt in this.

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• Raw Milk Greek Yogurt – In the Instant Pot
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• How to Make Homemade Sauerkraut
• Homemade Fizzy Kombucha Tea Recipe

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