Preparing beefheart...

[Moloch]

So this is NOT what I expected I just bought a whole heart, shrink-wrapped. Its 6 pounds. Now I gotta figure out how to clean it and prepare it.

Planning on basically cutting it into little 1/4" or so chunks, but GETTING to that point might prove difficult....


Through the packaging I can feel parts that are almost hard as rock...this should be interesting.

 

[GhostShrimpMan]

LOL GL.

 

[FishingOut]

hahaha. Mannn, I remember my first whole cow heart.

I would advise you ask the butcher to chop off all the fat and nasty bits before shrink wrapping it.
The butcher seemed shocked when I asked him for the whole heart. He was like "you know they are around 8bs, you need it for a project or something?". I said no, Its for my fish. And his jaw kind of dropped a bit haha.
But anyway, Once you get passed that iron bloody liver smell its really easy to slice up with a good knife.
Good luck. Hope your fish enjoy!
*Thats alot of meat for the fish you have haha they will never eat all that.

 

[NCStateFisher]

bahahah enjoy that man.. im loving the simplicity and lack of waste of frozen bloodworms... they could be completely full and they'd still make sure they eat every last one

 

[Moloch]

hahaha. Mannn, I remember my first whole cow heart.

I would advise you ask the butcher to chop off all the fat and nasty bits before shrink wrapping it.
The butcher seemed shocked when I asked him for the whole heart. He was like "you know they are around 8bs, you need it for a project or something?". I said no, Its for my fish. And his jaw kind of dropped a bit haha.
But anyway, Once you get passed that iron bloody liver smell its really easy to slice up with a good knife.
Good luck. Hope your fish enjoy!
*Thats alot of meat for the fish you have haha they will never eat all that.

Haha yeah that would have been much better...I got it in at food lion (they had to order it for me) and by the time I got there tonight the butcher was gone and the clerk was just washing the floor. He found the box & it had two pre-wrapped hearts in it, so I just took one and left. Eight bucks for 6 pounds...I wasn't complaining much. Next time I'd see about finding a real butcher to do it up for me and see if they'd even be willing to do all the prep-work for a couple extra bucks.

All in all its not too bad a process. It came out of the wrapping in two large pieces, I cut one of those in half and went to town on it. by the time I got it all trimmed up & cut into little cubes I had 2 sandwich bags flattened out at about 1/4-1/2" tall, even spread across the whole bag. I left the other 3/4 of the heart untouched, double bagged in ziplock gallon-size freezer bags and then put the two sandwich bags in a gallon freezer bag.

So based on that I should end up with about 8 total sandwich bags full of meat. I tossed in a 5 or 6 of the chunks I cut up and had to pull a bit of em back out tonight (granted, they've already been fed once) so I figure each bag is probably...30-40 servings. That amount should decrease due to growth by the time I'm finished with this heart

All things considered (so far) it really doesn't seem like a bad route to go. It'll be interesting to see how it works out getting the next serving out since its all frozen now; and defrosting the next pieces of heart to trim up and prepare will probably be slightly annoying.


Its an experience, thats for sure.

 

[GhostShrimpMan]

Good thing you didn't cut yourself.

 

[Moloch]

^ I'm comfortable with knives.

My wife freaked out a little bit though
Beefheart in her kitchen...and in her freezer too? WTF?

 

[GhostShrimpMan]

^ I'm comfortable with knives.

My wife freaked out a little bit though
Beefheart in her kitchen...and in her freezer too? WTF?

LOL, I can imagine.

She gave you the butcher look.

 

[MonsterMinis]

freeze it.. and take a cheese grater to it... ? But tbh.. beefheart and mammalian proteins in general are hard for most fish to digest. mine get about 1 cube a week. and thats mainly for my Bichir.

 

[Moloch]

Yeah I'm still not sure how often I'm going to feed it to them. It might become a part of the saturday routine, maybe twice a week if it seems ok...