Identifying organ meats in lamb or beef

[nummytummy]

So I've discovered a halal butcher shop in my area that will give me pretty much any animal part I want if I ask for it and show up on the right day. Today I got a beautiful load of fresh lamb's livers, hearts and kidneys. My question is, how do I identify other glands such as adrenal and thyroid glands? I know that the adrenal glands are supposed to sit above the kidneys, so I'm assuming I've got those with the kidneys, but what about the thyroid? And how do I make sure I really have the adrenals? They had the entire chunk of lamb's innards in one piece and just cut me off the parts I asked for, so I'm sure if I wanted more, or a specific part, I could get it for the asking, or even take the entire thing, stomach and esophagus and all, and it all seems to be connected with fat. I just don't know what to do with it. I'm still a beginner at even the raw meat eating thing.

Any advice? And can anyone tell me which organs and glands are the best to eat health-wise? I read somewhere that pancreas is good, but I'm not sure if I could identify that on a fresh piece of lamb offal.

Thank you!

[nummytummy]

Also how do I know which is the gallbladder, to make sure I DON'T eat it and get sick?

And should I take the stomach and make tripe? How do I do that? I've (rarely) had tripe soup before, but I have no idea how to prepare raw stomach.

And are there parts of the lamb's head that are particularly good for health? Not to be gruesome but they have piles of freshly slaughtered lamb's heads, including the eyes. A related question: does anyone know if eating the eyes are good for improving vision?

So many questions. Any and all answers much appreciated. Eating raw meat has opened up a whole new world for me. It's incredible.

[kurite]

I don't have an answer that is backed by science or anything but I asked a similar question about eating heart. It turnes out it contains larger amounts of taurine than other muscle meats. Guess what nutrient your body uses to keep your heart pumping? Yep...its taurine. Id assume that since our eyes don't vary all that much to other animals eyes that their would be certain nutrients in them that could improve your eyes.

[nummytummy]

so has anyone ever tried eating sheep or cow eyes? raw? how did it taste? is it chewy? or can you just swallow it? from what i read, the inside has a lot of salty juice. i'm wondering if it would be a bit like eating oysters and if they'd be nice with a fresh sort of mignonette sauce to balance the salty flavours.

i almost can't believe that i'm even thinking about this, let alone writing this, but i have no problem eating fish eyes, cheeks and brains (always cooked, or at least half cooked, so far), so i guess why wouldn't i eat sheep eyes? just wondering because the halal butcher has plenty of lamb's heads, and i think i saw someone today go in and leave with a bag of them. so somebody has to be doing something with them.

also, is it risky to eat brains, especially raw? i thought that even cooked eating animal brains could give you a form of spongiform encephalopathy (i.e. mad cow disease), or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. but here's an abstract saying that while spongiform encephalopathies can be spread by eating infected meat, creutzfeldt-jakob disease can't:

http://www.faqs.org/abstracts/Health/Creutzfeldt-Jakob-disease-and-related-transmissible-spongiform-encephalopathies.html

and if it's risky to eat brains raw would it also be risky to eat eyes raw, since it's connected by nerves?

i mean, i've already eaten lamb's brains before once in bulgaria, so if eating that sort of thing gives you some kind of prion-induced brain-wasting, i guess it's already too late for me. i'll be mad in 20-30 years after the incubation period is finished. 

and once i ate the mostly raw meat of a tuna, including the very red stringy flesh along the spinal chord, and the brains and eyes. afterwards i felt a distinct high, almost like the earth was moving under me. i honestly thought at one point that i'd felt a minor earthquake. but then nobody else had, so i guess it was the tuna brain giving me sea legs...

[TylerDurden]

Yeah, like cures like, so eat raw (grassfed) hearts if you have heart-disease etc.

CJD/BSE is only an issue when one is eating grainfed meats, and especially bad if you render the fat, according to studies done linking rendered-fat-consumption among cattle(!) to high BSE-rates. Eating grassfed meats is quite safe,

The raw organs I eat are:- hearts, liver, kidney, tongue, suet, marrow. I've also eaten sweetbreads(pancreas/thymus) in the past and  lungs but didn't much like the taste. Could only get raw grainfed brains  since going RPD so haven't continued the practice. I've also had fish eyes but, again, didn't like the taste.

[miles]

How much of a chance do you think there is of getting BSE from grain-finished muscle meat..?

[majormark]

We should make a wiki with animal parts and pictures so that people can identify them easily.