How to eat the whole animal, from the brains to the knees

Have Kiwis lost their taste for offal? Chef and restaurateur John Yip thinks so.

“The older generation, they ate a lot of offal because they were forced to.”

Kiwi-raised Chinese Yip also grew up eating innards.

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“Chicken feet, beef tongue, tendons, intestines, honeycomb tripe,” he says. Prized in Cantonese cuisine, in New Zealand these days they usually go into things like luncheon meat or even pet food.

That’s a shame, because there are few parts of an animal that aren’t edible. And if we care about the environment or even just cost, it’s worth learning how to make the most of them - and non-Western cultures are a great place to start.

Yip has a particular love for Japanese yakitori.

“Yakitori’s all about breaking down a whole chicken into 20-plus different parts, then you put them on sticks and cook over charcoal,” Yip explains. He learned the craft at Michelin-starred Hong Kong restaurant Yardbird, where “we’d butcher over 100 whole birds every day - chicken necks, thyroid, everything. Then the bones are made into stocks so it’s zero waste.”

Yip brought that experience to New Zealand when he and his partner, Jamie Yeon, opened Omni on Auckland’s Dominion Rd in 2020 (it closed in June last year and the pair now have Juno, on Williamson Ave).

Omni’s yakitori menu included chicken hearts and soft bone, made from chicken knee.

Hearts, says Yip, have some of the distinctive iron flavour of blood-rich products, “but it’s pleasant”. Rich and slightly gamey, with plenty of umami, hearts should be served medium rare so they’re not too chewy. The tiny morsels are extremely versatile; they work as well stir-fried or slow cooked as they do over charcoal.

Knee cartilage is also richly savoury, but most notable for its unique texture, both chewy and crunchy. “You have to work for it,” Yip says. It's tasty grilled, or as an addition to soups or stews, while deep-fried chicken knees are often served as a crunchy snack.

Those who grew up eating boiled tongue may have been pleasantly surprised by Omni’s Wagyu tongue, shaved on a meat slicer so it resembles carpaccio.

Growing up in Malaysia, very close to the Singapore border, tongue featured in one of Kim Chiw Ng’s favourite foods: kway chap. The soup consists of flat rice noodles, a flavourful broth - and pig innards.

“I like the kway chap because of the intestine in there,” says Ng, who goes by Sam.

Today, kway chap is a popular item on the menu at his Greenlane restaurant Treasure Kitchen - “still with intestines!”.

Intestines need to be washed with starch, which gets rid of both dirt and smell, then boiled until soft. Ng uses small intestine in his kway chap; large intestine is boiled, dried with a paper towel and then placed in the cool room for about six hours. Deep-fried, it’s a “very very yummy” entree.

Peppery chicken and pig stomach soup sells well at both lunch and dinner, says Ng.

The whole stomach, or maw, is kneaded with vinegar and salt, then rinsed with water. This process is repeated a few times. After that Ng dries the stomach with a paper towel, then pan fries it whole, to release the juices, then boils for a few hours “until the smell comes out”, before slicing and adding to the soup with pepper, spices and chicken.

The result is a nourishing cold weather dish that Ng says is particularly good for new mothers or people recovering from illness.

For classic Malaysian fish head soup, Ng deep fries the heads so they can be scooped out of the coconut milk broth and eaten in one crunchy mouthful.

Despite its name, Auckland Halal Butchers doesn’t cater only to Muslims, says manager Shahid Qari.

Europeans, however, mainly buy steak. But the butcher’s other clients - a mix of mainly people from Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern cultures - love more unusual meats, and Auckland Halal Butchers is a great place to find goat meat, lamb heads, beef feet or chicken hearts (no pork, however, as it’s not halal).

“I love offal,” says Qari, who grew up in Afghanistan and has lived in New Zealand for nearly 25 years. He still cooks it a lot at home, and helps customers to use it.

Lamb brains, he says, are best steamed or boiled whole, then fried with onions, tomatoes, green chilli and your choice of spices, though older Kiwis grew up eating it breaded and deep fried. Brains don’t carry a lot of flavour, but are enjoyed for their creamy texture.

“I love tendons,” says Qari. “It’s like a jelly. You can use it for soup, and by the way, in Singapore you’d get this in 5-star hotels.” Qari likes to slow cook the tendons, then cook again with meat and rice for a biryani.

When cooked, trotters take on a sticky texture and the flavour of the spices they’re cooked with. Qari cuts them into small pieces and serves with naan bread.

A less popular, though attention-grabbing, item available at the butchers is lamb testicles.

Like chicken hearts, testicles can be skewered and cooked over charcoal, says Qari.

“Or you can just chop it and fry it. It’s very hard to describe what it tastes like, but it’s very nice… you have to try it.”