Sweetbreads Slider

Unfortunately we ran this special yesterday and had underestimated our fans appreciation of some skillfully prepared offal goodness. For those of you unfamiliar with this delicacy, sweetbreads, refer to either the thymus which is located in the throat or the pancreas which lies near the stomach. As far as I know they call them sweetbreads because it is a hard sell when you call them what they are? Thankfully we have euphemisms otherwise many people would be missing out. Due to the process in which we prepare our sweetbreads we are unable to run this special again today. Here is glimpse of how it went down.

We got excited to see sweetbreads on our trip to the market and immediately grabbed a few pounds and started a 24 hour soak in milk. We knew we had to get moving quickly to be able to run this as a special by Friday so the plan was start getting the sweetbreads ready for service and think about the rest of the flavors at a later time.

And then thanks to time constraints this week the next picture is the finished product. What you didn't see was rinsing them after the milk and placing them in a pot of cold water with a little salt, bay leaves, and lemon. We then applied heat and simmered for 15 minutes. As soon as the time had elapsed we plunged them into a bucket of ice water. While this blanching step is not completely necessary it sure does make it a little easier to accomplish the next step. The next step is to remove the membrane and any visible veins while still trying to keep the whole thing intact which can be a task in itself. We then wrapped all the desirable product in cheese cloth and pressed it between two pans with extra weight resting on the top pan. After another 24 hours we were ready to roll. We sliced it into thick slices and held them in the fridge to await service. So as you can see, it takes a little dedication and advance planning to prepare sweetbreads but the patience in the end is rewarded. The aforementioned later time to pick flavors to compliment ended up being Saturday morning at the market. While picking up some of the other produce items on our list we came across a bin of nice looking daikon. We sliced it up and threw it in a rice wine vinegar pickling liquid. We wanted to add a pickle to this slider to combat some of the richness of the sweetbreads and the toasted sesame and shiner bock tempura batter that encapsulated them. To this we added a little heat in the form of a sriracha aioli and topped it all off with a piece of toasted nori. As soon as we had the daikon in the cart we went ahead and committed to the Asian flavor profile. This slider flew out the window like hot cakes. Thank you to everyone who got the chance to check this special out and who continue to support what we do.