Archived from Cohost post from Feb 22nd, 2024
I really like cooking, mostly because I really like eating, and since I’m a baby that refuses to not eat deliciously every single meal I end up spending a lot of my day cooking. I don’t post about if often for a bunch of reasons, the biggest one being that I’m very bad at plating and I’m kinda embarrassed at how not pretty my pictures look.
I’m trying to get over that so here’s the last culinary experiment: braised chicken hearts!
My friend Ellen mentioned that she really likes chicken hearts cooked in tomato sauce and I got super curious about it. Chicken hearts are pretty common in churrascos in Brazil, but I’ve never eaten them in any other form before. I’ve bought them a few times here in Canada, but they’re kinda meh when they’re just pan grilled so I really wanted to find new ways of cooking them. They’re very cheap and supposedly chock full of nutrients and proteins, but they can also be a bit fatty.
I couldn’t find a recipe to cook them straight out in the tomato sauce tho, and since they can get pretty rubbery I didn’t want to risk it, so I grabbed the closest recipe I could find: Chicken hearts braised with tomatoes and bell peppers. It’s deliiiiicious – just the right texture and the sauce is really good. They go amazing with bread!
I put a few recipes together to come out with this one, so here’s how I did it:
- 1lb of chicken hearts
- 1 diced big tomato, peeled and without seeds
- 1/2 a bell pepper, finely diced
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 chopped garlic cloves
- 1 and a 1/4 cup of chicken stock
- 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
- 1/2 tablespoon of paprika
- Parsley and salt to taste
Wash the chicken hearts well and remove the arteries and excess of fat if needed. Season with salt and let them dry for a bit.
Heat a bit of olive oil in the frying pan and stir fry the chicken hearts in medium-low for a few minutes, until they’re almost not pink anymore. Throw in the bell pepper, onions, garlic and tomatoes and stir them until the onions look soft and transparent.
The chicken hearts will have let go quite a bit of water by this point, but to make sure it doesn’t dry add 1 cup of chicken stock. Cover and let it simmer on low fire for around 20 minutes. Keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t burn.
When the liquid have mostly dried uncover it, add the soy sauce and paprika and toss to incorporate. Add the rest of the chicken stock and let it simmer for 2-3 minutes. Season with parsley to taste and it’s done!
This serves two people for a light meal – I think it should be a hearty meal for one. We had it with rice and it was an OK combination, but tried it with a bit of leftover bread and it goes reaaaaaally well with bread. Buri mentioned it might go well with buttered spaghetti as well and I agree, we’ll be trying that next time!
(if you speak portuguese and want a video recipe, I mostly followed this video , but I mixed with some other recipes that seemed to work better with my stainless steel pan)