Does anyone know where I could purchase fresh veal sweetbreads? I live in the Chicago area. My grandmother cooked them to perfection and I inherited all of her wonderful recipes and cookbooks. I would love to make them but cannot find them anywhere.

Thank you

quote:

Originally posted by Lone Star

Doesn’t chorizo contain part of the thymus, or is it lymph material ???

I know one of the ingredients listed on the chorizo package is "lights" which are lungs.

There’s a great story about Eleanor Roosevelt, whose supervision of White House menus was a bit eccentric. Particularly fond of sweetbreads, she once ordered them served four times in one week. Franklin left a note in her bedside basket (their chosen mode of communication) good-naturedly complaining that the delicacy was giving him an upset stomach, "which does not help my relations with foreign powers. Yesterday I bit two of them."

quote:

Originally posted by kangolpimp

What neighborhood in Queens is that – sounds like Forest Hills – am I close?

Yes, Forest Hills, and it is most definitely not a fancy place but the food makes up for it.

Doesn’t all good sausage contain everything but the squeal, or moo, or baa or whatever the case may be !!! [:D]

Doesn’t chorizo contain part of the thymus, or is it lymph material ???

Ox-Tails were $3.78 a lb. at our Walmart this weekend. The ox-tail stew didn’t materialize at that price !!

No *doubt* about offal prices being, well, awful.

A lot of it has to do with the growth of centralized packinghouses that send the offal to where there’s the most demand….tongue is a hot commodity in Seattle- there’s a lot of pho noodle soup places that use it, there’s a great Italian deli-guy who cures it, we have a bunch of asian markets, etc. Tongue regularly costs as much at wholesale here as whole tenderloins.

Eric

Oops, obviously I meant HARD to get your HANDS on.

Can someone explain to me why, if things like sweetbreads or tongue are considered ‘offal’, then why are they so damned expensive? It burns me up to pay $13-16 for a beef tongue. Especially here in Colorado, where they are hand to get your hands on.

Not exactly cheap, but not exactly Haute Cuisine, the 13 Coins Restaurants in Seattle and SeaTac both feature sweetbreads entrees in the $12-15 range. They’re not bad, although I’ve had firmer.

Eric, Glandularly

Hop on over to Queens to Salut, up around 107th or 8th St. It’s a small Uzbeki restaurant and they have (or did up until fall 2002, which was my last visit) skewered and grilled sweetbreads cooked to perfection – and inexpensive. If you run across any Romanian restaurants in your travels, check them out for sweetbreads too.

I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina and all BBQ places there served glands which included the thymus. I left it alone as well as other glands that they served. I stayed with familiarity. I am a roadfooder, but I do not get too far out.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN