For most of my adult life I had zero interest in cooking kidneys. I enjoyed them at good French restaurants, but whenever I’d tried them at home, their urinary undertones were too distressing. Then, a few years ago I found a recipe with a technique that it claimed would solve that problem – and it did! Ever since, I’ve enjoyed an occasional dish of that recipe’s kidneys in mustard sauce.
With the most recent veal kidney from my butcher shop, I thought it was time to try a different approach. In Richard Olney’s The French Menu Cookbook I found a recipe that uses the same “kidney cleansing” technique. Olney’s simple Sautéed Veal Kidneys with Mushrooms is fairly similar to my previous recipe; its main differences are using cognac instead of calvados, omitting mustard from the sauce, and including mushrooms.
The hardest thing about any kidney dish is preparing the kidney itself. Unlike small, smooth, round lambs’ kidneys (delicious but very hard to find locally), a veal kidney is an agglomeration of soft meat lumps held together with a complicated internal chunk of fat and tubes. Beloved Spouse did his usual heroic job of reducing this one to manageable segments.
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For the cleansing technique, I melted butter in a pan; tossed the salted and peppered kidney pieces in it over high heat very briefly – just until they turned grayish on the outside; and set them up in a strainer, where they gently exuded the reddish-yellowish liquid that carries the uriny taste.
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The next thing to work on for the recipe was the mushrooms. Coincidentally, I’d just bought a small batch of fresh chanterelles, which I thought should be very compatible with the kidneys and sauce.
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I cleaned, sliced, and sautéed them in the butter remaining in the pan, then set them aside and did the same with minced shallots. When those had softened a bit I deglazed the pan with cognac, white wine, and a little very concentrated homemade broth. The recipe doesn’t call for broth, but I did it because in the headnote Olney remarks that, among professional chefs, “meat glaze usually lends additional body and intensity to the sauce.” Sounded good to me.
At that point I returned the chanterelles to the pan, stirred in heavy cream, and cooked gently until the sauce had reduced and thickened somewhat. Then I was able to set it all aside until dinner time.
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When dinner was nearly ready I folded the kidneys into the mushrooms and sauce, warmed everything through, being careful not to let the sauce boil, and served.
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It was marvelous. Everything blended beautifully, the kidneys were delicately flavorful, and the chanterelles truly loved the sauce. In fact, they were almost tastier than the kidneys. An accompaniment of small boiled potatoes and white asparagus completed a highly satisfying dish.
I know innards aren’t everyone’s first love, but properly prepared they aren’t overpowering. They have gentle flavors, different from those of the familiar muscle meats – and for me, at least, a change is always welcome. I love prime rib, but I don’t want it all the time. Kidneys, liver, brains, sweetbreads: They all have something different to contribute to the kind of diet we’re fortunate enough to be able to enjoy.
I think that sauce would make almost anything taste good!
Thanks for your instructions on how to detoxify a kidney. Many, many years ago, I read Julia Child’s recipe, so I had to try it. After several cold acidulated water purgings, the house was filled with the tell tale smell, and so were the kidneys. We had something else that evening, and I set the kidneys out for the cat – who also refused to eat them. I have never again cooked kidneys, but your post has encouraged me to be more adventurous.
Thanks so much! I’m so lucky I found this recipe. I wanted to make exactly this dish because my husband loved it when we were once in Alsace, France. I created some notes for the recreation of the dish, but had to look up how to actually prep and cook the veal kidneys. I’ve never even touched kidneys, other than the mini taste I took of my husband’s dinner that day in Alsace. Now I know how to prep the kidneys. As for the recipe for the sauce, I was about 90% on the mark.