How to Cook with Giblets: Rediscovering the Whole Bird with Floffal
Guest Blog Written by: Flora Philips
Photo credit: Field Magazine
A lifelong obsession with Offal
Floffal was born out of a very simple but very profound, personal obsession with offal. I first tried liver when I was 11. I am now 28, and it has become my life’s work.
Offal taught me how to cook. I’d come to understand that it had infiltrated not just what and how I cooked and ate, but how I operated and understood things throughout life and work. It continues to foster a specific approach to sourcing, relating to and respecting ingredients all together
What is offal and why does it matter?
As a butcher, I have an intimate experience in crafting meat, in the anatomical sense, and eventually, making it into ‘food’. I work with whole animals, which to me involves never just the carcass, but the entire anatomy and elements that encompass the life of the animal, which we have the privilege of working with. This is offal, the ‘fifth quarter’ as it is often referred to.
Floffal seeks to re-introduce and re-invigorate the somewhat lost understanding and embracement of offal as part of meat-eating, particularly in our country and culture. Offal ticks a great number of consumer and lifestyle boxes: nutrition, sustainability, taste, economising, ethics, I could go on…
The quality of any meat is down to multiple factors: nutrition, environment, welfare, husbandry, to name a few, all of which Sutton Hoo Chicken have at the core of their business. Each of these factors are intertwined with and made apparent via the animals’ offal. It is, quite literally, the vital parts of the animal, and they process all of the nutrients and reinforce all of the carefully curated aspects of rearing animals that then comes to be reflected in the quality of the meat itself.
Consider that the deliciousness and condition of an animal’s meat - its muscle - will be the same, if not more so, of the organs that grew that muscle and that processed and provided the nutrients that it was exposed to in its lifetime.
Sutton Hoo Chicken & The Giblets
Inside every Sutton Hoo whole chicken, you’ll find a little bag of treasures - the giblets: heart, neck, and liver. Though once a staple in traditional cooking, many people today aren’t sure what to do with them. In a recent survey of 4,500 Sutton Hoo customers, 45% admitted they never use the giblets, while 83% said they’d love to learn how. That curiosity inspired us to start a new conversation - one that celebrates cooking with the whole bird and brings these humble parts back to the table.
It is important for us to understand and accept that eating meat involves the lives of animals. We can honour this, and every process involved from hatching an egg to having a functional protein source on our plate, by understanding and accepting offal into our meat-eating.
Sutton Hoo chickens are lovingly reared as free range birds, over 40 acres, and slow grown to allow for natural and healthy muscle (and organ) development. You can read about the specific environmental, nutritional and welfare standards here.
In light of this, both the meat (muscles) and giblets of these birds are of a distinct quality, which is beneficial for our health, and as cooks!
A Closer Look
The HEART
Across the offal catalogue, heart really is the most accessible and able to be homogenised with the meat most are used to eating. Heart is a muscle, as is all ‘meat’ we usually consider, and so can be cooked in much the same way as other lean cuts.
Heart holds a real sweetness to it, similar perhaps to the chicken oyster (a pearly little muscle that sits against the curve of the pelvis) as a lean protein, with a beautiful blushing colour. Heart contains high levels of protein, iron, B vitamins (especially B12), essential minerals such as zinc, and amino acids.
The LIVER
As exquisite as the classic paté is, there’s more to chicken livers than just that. Chicken livers, quite unlike most mammal livers, are decadent, creamy, and much less ‘metallic’ than darker red-meat animals. This being said, they can inject a real punch of flavour to things like ragus or pie fillings, providing an earthy, umami layer to enrich traditionally sweet-salty meat dishes. This makes them very versatile, and a good first introduction to eating liver as part of your diet.
They are densely nutritious - concentrated in Vitamin A, Iron, B Vitamins and Folates, and other minerals including Selenium and Zinc, all of which contribute to vital immune function and further nutrient and oxygen absorption throughout the body.
The NECK
Chicken necks actually comprise a very decent amount of lean, wonderfully savoury meat - a delicate and strong build of muscles, connective tissues and tendons around the vertebrae. Like heart, this is very homogenous with the darker thigh meat of the chicken, and with an echoing sweetness of the chicken oyster.
They are full of protein and collagen - a much-desired and sought-after ingredient many people would spend a lot of money and time to implement into their diets. Out of all the giblets, the neck does require the most cooking. These are tough, complex, and reward patience with deep flavour and texture.
Why Giblets fell out of fashion
“They seem to symbolise confusion, excess, even repulsion — which I can understand, given how rarely we see them in modern recipes.”
Utilising and re-homogenising giblets back into the way we cook a whole bird can be very simple. Not so long ago, it would be abnormal to not buy a bird with them. Their concentrated flavour and nutritional value imbues through any sauce, gravy or stock very well. It’s a long-established means of using the whole bird, but since being a butcher I’ve always been surprised how often people actually reject taking the little pack of giblets along with them, even when paying for their weight included with the ‘whole bird’ purchase.
It seems they symbolise confusion, excess, even as far as repulsion, which I can sympathise with, given how much rarer it is to see them sold or included with a whole chicken, or in recipes. The general contemporary cooking message is one of convenience - quick, clean, uncomplicated. While this has many advantages, it is somewhat inaccurate in terms of representing the eating and sourcing of meat as it actually is. Offal holds an acute symbolism to this which I feel is important to embrace. And while, on the other hand, in kitchen culture and beyond people are investing in sustainability, slower-grown, provenance-focussed food, offal has always been there to satisfy each of these factors and more, in an accessible and humbling way.
The best & easiest way to start using your giblets:
If you’re new to giblets and want to start introducing them gently into your cooking, a roast chicken is the perfect place to begin. There are two simple ways to do this that both deepen the flavour and help you make the most of your whole bird: using the giblets to enrich your gravy and turning them into a nourishing stock afterward.
Gravy: After roasting your chicken whole, you can remove it from the roasting tray to rest, add the giblets to the remaining juices, add extra water and/or stock, and simmer or roast them gently back in the oven to infuse and reduce into a lovely jus or gravy (adding flour or your chosen thickener).
Stock: Once you have enjoyed your roast chicken, you can take the carcass and all other bones, place them in a large pot with onion, carrot, leek, garlic, bay leaves, salt and peppercorns, and the giblets. Put the pot on a medium heat, with a bit of oil or leftover chicken fat, and stir so that every ingredient gets fried and a bit of golden (or even darker) colour on them. If you want a really light, ‘clean’ broth, you can skip this step and just pour enough water over all of the ingredients so that it covers them (probably 3 litres).
Stuffing: Before or while your whole bird is roasting in the oven, you can chop the heart and liver finely, and fold it into a stuffing mix of your choice, to make into balls and then roast in with the chicken to add a real depth of rich, savoury and earthy flavour to sometimes too sweet or salty stuffing balls(!). You could pre-cook the chicken neck also (a simple braise in stock, wine and aromats, or even just water, until the meat can be peeled and broken away from the bone), and mix this into the stuffing.
Exploring the Giblets Further
Once you’ve tried enriching a gravy, simmering a stock, or folding the heart and liver into a simple stuffing, you start to notice the personality of each giblet. Their textures, subtle sweetness, and depth of flavour begin to reveal themselves, and you realise that even a small bag contains more than enough to transform a meal.
Cooking with giblets can be simple, but it can also be wonderfully exploratory. Each part has its own story to tell: the delicate creaminess of the liver, the gentle sweetness of the heart, the quiet generosity of the neck, and the way the whole bird comes together when treated with care and attention. Paying closer attention to these parts is a way of honouring the animal, the craft of butchery, and the meals that sustain us.
To celebrate this, I’ve created four dishes exclusively for Sutton Hoo Chicken that take the giblets a little further - each one designed to highlight their unique character, and to encourage a curiosity that goes beyond the usual roast dinner. They are thoughtful, playful, and intended to provoke new ways of thinking about the ingredients in your kitchen.
Take a closer look, try them for yourself, and see how a small, often-overlooked part of the chicken can become the star of the plate.
