With reference to eating beef hearts, there is (as I sure many of you know) a great Peruvian dish made from thin sliced or cubed marianated grilled beef hearts, antichukos I think is close to the name.

Thus thread has been going on for several years and it was here that a post about beef hearts made me look at the ingredient list on a can of Wolf Brand on the shelf. Sure ’nuff, beef hearts.

So far as using beef hearts in chili is concerned, Tolbert (as is often the case) has relevant information, IMO. In Bowl of Red, I believe you will find someone quoted as saying that the beef for chili should come from a tough old brush popping steer "of some character." Filet is not a good meat for chili – it tends to break down into mush. Muscle meat like heart stands up to long cooking. I suspect that the use of heart in a canned product is both an economic and recipe decision with the interest of a little more texture than might otherwise be the case. Certainly the pieces of meat in any canned chili I’ve tried were well cooked and not tough.

In the interest of full disclosure I suppose I must say that heart is high in cholesterol, but that is what we have Lipitor for. In the past, I’ve brought Wolf Brand from Texas to Georgia where I live today in the interest of having a better quick bowl of chili.