Word: offalness
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Tough economic times have Britons eating their hearts out and swallowing their tongues. Not literally, of course. But offal - or "variety meats," as the food category is euphemistically called in the U.K. - is experiencing a surge in popularity, with sales up 67% over the past five years...
...Retail and food experts say that worry over the high cost of prime meat cuts and the economic downturn have more shoppers checking out supermarket offal offerings. But the return to eating innards was under way even before this year's financial crisis, as celebrity chefs and restaurateurs have encouraged a return to cooking organs such as liver and kidneys, which once enjoyed a central place in British cooking. (See how farmers around the world prepare their crops for harvest...
...ASDA, Britain's second largest supermarket chain and a subsidiary of Wal-Mart, offal sales were up 20% last month compared to November 2007. Sainsbury's, the country's third largest supermarket chain, is selling 48% more pig livers, 22% more chicken livers and 8% more pig kidneys than it was last year. Overall, sales of offal in the U.K. are expected to reach more than $62 million this year, according to industry analysts Mintel...
...price-driven," says Bob Cotton, CEO of the British Hospitality Association, which represents 60,000 hotels and restaurants in the U.K. "I couldn't say the British public have suddenly fallen in love with offal. That would be gilding the lily...
...Perhaps. But as people buy more tongues, brains, chitterlings (intestines) and trotters (feet), price is not the only consideration. British chef Fergus Henderson, who had a hand in the trend back to organs when he opened his London restaurant St. John with an offal-filled menu in 1994, says taste matters - and every part of an animal can be delicious. "It was never a mission to start the offal ball rolling; it just seemed common sense, good eating," says Henderson, whose cookbook Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking was met with rave reviews...