Ox Heart Fajitas

Posted On 7 February 2023

When you think of Fajitas, the first thing you think of generally (I’d imagine) wouldn’t be “ooh Ox Heart”. However, I saw Lee Tiernan at ‘The Big Feastival’ in 2022, and he was talking about using heart for all sorts of things – but in particular, for kebabs or similar. There’s a recipe for that in his book.

Anyway, I decided to give it a go, and ordered in a heart from the butchers. I know it was super cheap but I can’t remember how much it was (in fact I have no idea, it was bundled into the rest of the meat we were buying and I don’t bother getting an itemised receipt from my butchers).

So in keeping with my last post, I’ll try and do this so you can replicate it.

Prepping the heart

So this was the most intensive part of the process, but actually not difficult. I think Lee Tiernan says in his book, something along the lines of “as long as you’ve got time and a sharp knife this is fine” (those are not his words but that’s the general message). So, here’s the heart:

The first step is to cut all the big chunks of fat off. That took some time, but when done, I placed them on a rack on a deep baking tray, and cooked on gas mark 1 (so about 135c I think) for about 6 hours. That gave us a good quantity of beef dripping for use at a later date (Yorkshires or Roasties… MMMmmm…)

Anyway, I cut the heart into manageable chunks, and then sliced thin slices off, slicing them again to form small strips.

Lee Tiernan talks about how to do this a lot better than I will (as this was my first amateurish attempt and he’s a pro) but essentially there is a sort of skin on the outside, and various parts on the inside that you don’t want. I cut them all out and it all the cuts we didn’t want were used for dog food (so nothing was wasted).

And this is what we ended up with:

Cooking the heart – stir fry style

I then just covered that a mix of things like paprika, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and a little chilli powder. Then let that marinade for a good hour or two, then stir fried with some red onion and regular onion slices, and served with some stir fry veg, wraps, and cheese.

I say that like it was a simple process but even then I’d be skipping steps, so:

1. The wok or pan should be SUPER HOT. Like insane hot. I left the wok getting hot for ages.
2. I then added a smidge of rapeseed oil, and chucked in the beef. I forgot to put the extractor fans on and caused a LOT of smoke to appear… but hey ho, if there’s no smoke there’s no fun.
3. Once the beef had started to cook I added the onions. We let that cook through, took it out to rest, and added the other veg to the same wok.
4. …and that’s it! It really is simple.

So… what was it like?!

Well, out of interest, before we did anything with the marinade, we sliced off two thin steak slices and fried them up in a little salt, pepper and a splash of oil. My friend Adam said it best, when he said it was a little like the texture of liver, and the flavour of beef but with a stronger iron flavour. It was good, and I’d quite happily have it like that, but we had it as above – in the wraps.

To be honest, when it was in the wrap, with the other bits of veg, and all the flavours of the sauce etc etc – there was very little to tell it was heart. So if you’re looking for a good cheap cut of meat, and you have some time on your hands – this is 100% a solid recommendation. With the bonus you can make yourself some beef dripping which is 100% a winner for Yorkshire puddings etc etc…