Thai Chicken with Basil (and Organs!) was inspired by a recent discovery of a chicken and organ blend from Force of Nature. Any ground meat dish deserves to have some organs added. It’s a way to boost nutrient-density in our favorite meals. It’s easy to do by hand, but once I discovered these blends, I’ve incorporated them into many of our meals.
My nutrient-density soapbox
Nutrient-density matters. We can only get so many calories in a day and we want them to have as many nutrients as possible. Since organ meats are higher in nutrients than muscle meats, one way to do this is to add organs into all the regular meat dishes we are serving. But how?
I shared this in my presentation last fall at the Wise Traditions conference, providing several examples. In short, any recipe that calls for ground meat could have organs added.
Blending organs
One way is to blend organs and add them into your recipes. If you are preparing small batches, I recommend grinding organs and freezing them into small quantities – even as small as ice cubes. Or in glass jars or other containers at the right size for the majority of your meals. Then if you are only preparing a quarter pound of ground meat, you can pop in an ice cube of ground liver (or kidney or heart or whatever you have available), or more depending on your portion sizes.
To grind organs into a ground blend. I cut the organs up into about 1” cubes and blend in a food processor. However, I have two recommendations:
- Start with organs that are semi-frozen
- Use the pulse setting on your food processor and watch as you go.
To start with semi-frozen organs, pull them from freezer into the fridge just before bed and process first thing in the morning. Or, just put your bowl of prepped organ cubes back into the freezer for about 10 minutes or so before you blend them.
Steps to blending liver: use partially frozen liver, cut into 1″ cubes, place in food processor, pulse to blend
Both of these recommendations help keep your blend in solid pieces rather than turning into mush. Use the pulse setting to keep an eye as you are blending, to scrape down the sides if needed, and to keep you from walking away while preparing your ground organs.
A shortcut
That said, once we left Chicago last year we discovered Natural Grocers. It’s a mostly organic, hippie-style grocery store here in Colorado (and beyond, presumably). They sell a product by Force of Nature called Beef Ancestral Blend and Bison Ancestral Blend. The bison and beef products are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished. Check.
And, these blends are already mixed with liver, heart and kidney. I’d never seen something like this in the grocery store before and it was music to my ears! I am sure they don’t use as much organs as I would, and I still occasionally make my own blends, but I found this store-bought version to be time saving and very satisfying. I’ve purchased it more and more in the past year. I think this market is growing and I’ve heard of some other farms producing blends in other regions as well.
Wise Traditions
In the meantime, I shared all this at my Wise Traditions presentation. After the fact, Sarah, who works at Force of Nature reached out to tell me she’d seen my presentation(!) and wanted to send a care package.
Top to bottom: saute aromatics, add fish sauce mixture to aromatics and chicken blend, add remaining basil leaves, serve over romaine with a side of carrots
In the package, I received some of my fav Ancestral Blends, but was also surprised to find a couple of packages of Chicken Ancestral Blend. I had never seen this in the store before, and it includes chicken meat, liver, heart, skin and gizzard. Definitely worth a try! All of their products are also available online.
Thai Chicken with Basil and Organs
In the meantime, during my recent foray into my past Cooks Illustrated collection, I found another well-loved recipe: Thai Chicken with Basil from Winter 2010.
Nerdily, I always liked this recipe magazine because the magazine had a little picture of a brain on fire with Thai chili peppers. It explained how sweetness is required to keep the brain at bay when eating so much capsican – the active ingredient in chiles. Of course, in this version, I’ve seeded the chiles to keep the children appeased, and substituted the sugar with honey.
And instead of blending chicken organs on my own, as I may have in the past, I used the Force of Nature Ancestral Chicken Blend. Thanks, Sarah!
Thai-Style Chicken (and Organ Blend) with Basil
Notes
Ground chicken with organs can be made at home (described in recipe); however, I confess that this time I used Force of Nature's Ancestral Chicken Blend, which includes organs and skin.
Ingredients
- 2.5 cups fresh basil leaves
- 1-3 garlic cloves, peeled
- 8 Thai chiles, stemmed and seeded
- 2.5 T fish sauce
- 1 t white vinegar
- 2 t honey
- 2 lb chicken, ground with organs
- 1-3 shallots, peeled and sliced
- lard (or chicken smaltz, duck fat, fat of your choice)
- red pepper flakes (optional)
Instructions
- First, prep ingredients and prepare sauce. Start by adding half of the basil (one and a quarter cups), and all of the garlic and thai chiles to food processor. Pulse 8-12 times ("one one thousand, pause, two one thousand, pause...etc") until finely chopped. After, transfer one tablespoon of this basil blend to a bowl and add fish sauce, vinegar and honey. Reserve this bowl of sauce. Next, pour remaining basil blend into a large pan.
- Optionally, if you are preparing the chicken blend at home, do not rinse the food processor. Add large, uniformly-chopped pieces of (preferably partially frozen) chicken and organs (heart, liver, gizzard trimmed of silverskin, and skin) to the food processor (along with an extra tablespoon of fish sauce) and pulse to desired coarseness. Notably, the size of your chopped chicken pieces will dictate how many times you will need to pulse the processor to resemble a typical ground blend. (In my experience, 1" pieces takes about 40-50 pulses. Do not let processor run; it can lead to mush, especially if pieces are not well-chilled.)
- Next, add aromatics to the pan. Add the shallots and lard to join the basil blend waiting in the pan and turn on the heat to medium-low. Anticipate that sizzling should start after 1-2 minutes and if not, adjust the heat. Ultimately, cook for about 6-8 minutes until garlic and shallots are beginning to brown.
- Finally, finish up the stir-fry. Add the chicken to the now-fragrant basil blend and turn up the heat to medium. Cook for 3-5 minutes, mixing and breaking up the chicken blend. When the chicken is mostly cooked through, add the reserved bowl of sauce and mix it all up while chicken finishes cooking throughout. Lastly, stir in remaining one and a quarter cup of whole basil leaves and stir until limp, another 30 seconds or so. Optionally, garnish with red pepper flakes for more heat. Serve immediately.
Very cool. I’m definitely going to order some Force of Nature meats.
Sweet!