Martha Stewart Always Keeps This Type Of Meat Off Her Plate

Martha Stewart is no stranger to the kitchen. The self-made media mogul made a name for herself through her food and lifestyle brand, publishing several cookbooks and hosting a successful television show. While she's prepared all kinds of dishes over the years, there is one animal-based ingredient she won't touch: organ meat, also known as offal.

"There's certain things I won't cook," Stewart told Elle in 2016. "I will not cook brains, sweetbreads or offal ... things that in other parts of the world, they use a lot of. I won't cook hearts." Other chefs and food experts, such as Anthony Bourdain, thought highly of offal, criticizing the American tendency to throw out an animal's innards as wasteful. 

Edible organs include the heart, liver, and kidneys of animals, as well as the stomach and lungs. Stewart revealed that she was once served pig's blood and didn't love it. "I can eat it, but I don't enjoy it," she said. Stewart's 1982 cookbook "Entertaining" includes a recipe for liver pâté, a spread made from chicken liver, but it was published decades before the celebrity chef declared she won't cook offal. 

If you're American, organs probably don't come to mind when you think of eating meat, but in many countries, offal is an everyday part of the diet. Though Martha Stewart doesn't prepare organ-based dishes herself, she seems to recognize their culinary value elsewhere in the world. In 2023, she highlighted haggis, a traditional Scottish dish made from the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep, on her Martha blog after her special projects producer visited Scotland and had the dish.

Interestingly, there is one other unusual animal part that Stewart swears by: chicken feet. While not technically organs, they're uncommon in American cooking. Stewart recommends adding them to chicken stock due to their high collagen levels, and letting them simmer alongside the other ingredients and aromatics to build the stock's rich flavor. And while you won't find Stewart eating beef tongue, she once revealed on her blog that she uses it in her homemade dog food.