Pan-Fried Sweetbreads Piccata Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

What are sweetbreads and how should they be cooked? ›

Sweetbreads are highly prized by chefs for their mild flavor and tender, creamy texture. They are quite versatile and can be prepared many ways: sautéed, poached, grilled, fried, roasted or braised. Sweetbreads are often supporting stars in pâtés, terrines, sausages, cold appetizers, stews, and salads.

Sweetbreads are harvested from calves, lambs, and young cattle and refer to two different organs and three different tissues located in these animals. The thymus consists of two parts, one located in the cervical region in the neck adjacent to the trachea called neck sweetbread and the other in the thorax region.

At home, immediately place beef in a refrigerator set at 40 °F (4.4 °C); use within 3 to 5 days (1 or 2 days for ground beef and variety meats such as liver, kidneys, tripe, sweetbreads, or tongue) or freeze at 0 °F (-17.8 °C).

Things You Should Know

Soak sweetbreads in milk to help get rid of the irony, gamey flavor common to most offal meats, then blanch them for a firmer texture. Fry sweetbreads to make them more palatable if you're new to offal meats. Grill sweetbreads for a more authentic flavor.

Sweetbreads are the culinary name given to the thymus gland. Sometimes attempts are made to pass off the pancreas, ovaries or testes as sweetbreads, but the name belongs to the thymus.

Sweetbread is a culinary name for the thymus (also called throat, gullet, or neck sweetbread) or pancreas (also called stomach, belly or heart sweetbread), typically from calf (French: ris de veau) or lamb (ris d'agneau). Sweetbreads have a rich, slightly gamey flavor and a tender, succulent texture.

Sweetbreads are actually the thymus gland, and the name comes from their succulent flavor and texture along with the Old English word for meat. They're rich with minerals, healthy fats and fat soluble vitamins. One of the best things about sweetbreads is they're pretty much impossible to overcook.

Although not exactly sweet, they do have a subtle, pleasant and buttery flavor that reminds some people of scallops or perfectly cooked white meat, although sweetbreads have a softer texture than either.

Sweetbreads are particularly popular in France and Germany. They are favoured items in the cuisines of the Middle East, Greece, and Argentina, usually roasted, grilled, or panfried.

Soak sweetbreads in a shallow dish covered with milk. Set aside in a cool place or refrigerate for at least 4 hours to whiten. Discard milk, place sweetbreads in a saucepan, squeeze lemons over and drop in lemon shells as well. Add 1 tablespoon of salt, a pinch of pepper and cover with water.

Can you eat bread that has been in the fridge for 2 weeks? ›

Commercially baked breads and rolls can be stored at room temperature for 2 to 4 days or 7 to 14 days in the refrigerator. Bread products retain their quality when stored in the freezer for 3 months. Any breads containing meat or hard cooked eggs must be refrigerated within 2 hours.

The only trick is to make sure you clean them thoroughly, which means peeling off the membrane (the viscous sheath that surrounds the meat): After you rinse them to remove any traces of blood, boil for five minutes and then shock in an ice bath. This will help the membrane firm up and make it easier to peel.

If you can't get sweetbreads, you can substitute chicken, clams, crab, shrimp, any delicate meat. Firm, pressed tofu could be very nice as well. Or some kind of meaty mushroom. However, I honestly would not have liked this recipe as much as I did without it being my intro to sweetbreads.

> Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. Here in New Zealand, a Mince Pie is a pie containing mince meat. The type of mince pie you're talking about is called a Christmas Mince Pie or a Fruit Mince Pie.

The name refers to two glands usually harvested from calves or lambs: the thymus, near the throat, and the pancreas, near the stomach. Both glands have a mild mineral flavor, luxuriously soft texture, and distinct subtle sweetness, which food historians suggest is the origin of their more romantic name.

If you are new to offal, or fear it a little, sweetbreads are a good place to start I reckon. But why are they called sweetbreads? Well, they are sweet because they taste richer and sweeter compared to typical meat, and they are bread because the old English word for flesh is bræd.