How to Cook Sweetbreads

Published on Tuesday, March 24, 2009, by CHOW Video Team / Edit Post

How to Cook Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads are the thymus (commonly mistaken as thyroid, even by professional chefs) or pancreas gland of a lamb, calf, or piglet. Their function in a live animal: helping with the immune system and digestion. Their function on a plate: deliciousness. Christophe Gerard, chef de cuisine of FARM at the Carneros Inn, blanches them in milk, then drains them and pan-fries them in butter. You don’t need flour to get them nice and crisp.

CHOW Tips are the shared wisdom of our community. If you’ve figured out some piece of food, drink, or cooking wisdom that you’d like to share on video (and you can be in San Francisco), email Meredith Arthur and tell us what you’ve got in mind.

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POST A COMMENT |6 Comments

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  • Sweetbreads are the pancreas or thymus, but indeed not the thyroid.

  • He's a chef, not an anatomist (obviously). Personally, if i were him, I'd ask the video to be removed or re-shot since this makes him appear ignorant. However, if the man can cook and make sweetbreads edible, let him share his "chow tips."

  • Indeed the Chef is mistaken. The "sweetbread" is not the animal thyroid but rather the thymus.

    The veal thymus is a vetigal remnant of an under-developed and accesory ruminant neuro-gastric nidus that during the animal's adolescence becomes increasingly discouraged with dismal career prospects having found itself in a bovine thorax and so slowly sinks into a profound and prolonged depression.
    ...+READ

    Indeed the Chef is mistaken. The "sweetbread" is not the animal thyroid but rather the thymus.

    The veal thymus is a vetigal remnant of an under-developed and accesory ruminant neuro-gastric nidus that during the animal's adolescence becomes increasingly discouraged with dismal career prospects having found itself in a bovine thorax and so slowly sinks into a profound and prolonged depression.

    That is until it is hacked from its host's mediastinum.
    Which, unfortunately does not improve the thymus' chances for an interview.

    Which helps explain its drab color and demeanor.

    MeatBoy speaks the truth.-COLLAPSE

  • Ummm, doesn't the little blurb say that it is NOT the thyroid gland... and then chef dude says it is. WTF???? Thymus is NOT the thyroid, but rather an organ in the upper chest (not throat). I'm not sure what it does, but it has something to do w/ fighting auto-immunity. (or something like that). ;-)

  • Not sweet, no bread... sorta like grape-nuts.

  • I like how he reaches for his throat when he says it's the "thyroid gland from the veal"...!