The Cheap Ingredients That Anthony Bourdain Considered Underrated

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Longtime fans won't soon forget the episode of Anthony Bourdain's first show, "A Cook's Tour," in which he ate a still-beating cobra heart. Over the course of his decades-long career, Bourdain was famous for never shying away from fare that might make other foodies squirm. But even before his on-screen career began, in his seminal "Kitchen Confidential," Bourdain identified his first raw oyster as the igniting moment for his lifelong love of food. It comes as perhaps no surprise, then, that offal is the cheap type of ingredient that the chef named as the most underrated: namely oxtail, neck bone, and pig's feet.

In a 2017 interview with Business Insider, Bourdain explained, "So many traditional foods that we've sort of fallen out of touch with are underrated." A classic Italian ragu, notes Bourdain, comprises slow-cooked, lesser-appreciated cuts of offal like oxtail, neck bone, and pig's feet. "Next — the new lobster? Pig tails would be nice," says the chef-slash-writer. "They can be really, really great. And they're in limited supply, just like lobster, and it takes some skill to eat."

Pork feet (aka pig trotters) cost just $1.29 per pound via butcher J & J Packing Co. Inc. Pre-sliced, grass-fed beef oxtail runs for a similarly affordable $10.64 per pound via White Oak Pastures, and oxtail can even be found at major retailers like Costco and Walmart. Flavorful pork neck bones are also sold at many supermarkets, retailing for $3.34 per pound at Walmart or $1.99 per pound via Mad Butcher Meat Co.

Not all types of offal carry an unglamorous reputation. Sweetbreads are offal, even though they're considered fancy. So is foie gras, and it's for foie gras that Bourdain once named Quebec as the most decadent food city he ever visited. But at large, the modern foodie neglects offal's gourmet prowess, claimed Bourdain. "Across America, people have lost touch with what used to be a staple at a certain lower-income point," he tells the outlet. "The techniques that we're talking about — slow-cooking, braising, stewing, pickling — these are nothing new ... particularly in the cities, we have lost touch with them." The secret to maximizing all that cost-effective flavor is a return to low-and-slow cooking methods and an open mind.

Fellow celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson has publicly praised Chef Gabrielle Hamilton of the now-defunct fine dining restaurant Prune for introducing monkfish liver to the NYC food game. Hamilton's offal-centric dish swept the city's food scene as soon as it arrived — and Bourdain was such a fan of the chef's work that his rave review is printed on the cover of her 2012 semi-memoir "Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef." The two chefs even appeared together to host the book's launch party at Barnes and Noble Union Square in 2011. It's "offal-ly" high praise (sorry), and worth exploring these underrated ingredients if you have an extra buck or two (literally) to spare.