Beef Heart substitute

Best substitute

Flank steak

Use the same amount by weight as the beef heart you are replacing

Best for anticuchos

Different taste

Flank steak is the best substitute at 1:1 by weight, because it is lean, coarse-grained and made for acidic marinades and fast, very hot grilling, which is exactly what anticuchos need. Skirt steak works just as well and is juicier. Chicken hearts or lamb heart at 1:1 keep the mineral organ flavour if that is what you are after. Cubed sirloin is easiest to buy but gives you a plain beef kebab with none of the chew.

Other beef heart substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Skirt steak
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight
Beefier and fattier than flank, so it drips and chars beautifully on skewers and comes off the grill juicier than heart ever does.
What changes
Best for
anticuchos, skewers, grilling
The extra fat means it is more forgiving if you overshoot the timing, but it also means less of heart's dense springy chew. Trim the heavy membrane before cutting.
3Chicken hearts
Different texture
Use the same amount by weight
The same organ, the same clean mineral flavour, and cheap and widely available in Latin and Asian markets where beef heart is not.
What changes
Best for
anticuchos, skewers, grilling, pan-frying
Much smaller, so thread three or four per skewer instead of two slabs, and they cook in two to three minutes total. More tender and less chewy than beef heart, and they marinate faster, so two hours is plenty.
4Lamb or veal heart
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
Behaves almost identically to beef heart in every recipe, with the same lean dense grain and the same tolerance for a hard sear.
What changes
Best for
anticuchos, skewers, grilling, braises
Lamb heart is gamier and stronger, which suits an assertive aji panca marinade well but is noticeable if the seasoning is mild. Veal heart is milder and more tender than beef.
5Sirloin or top sirloin, cubed
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight
The easiest option to buy anywhere and perfectly good on a skewer, but tender and mild rather than dense and mineral.
What changes
Best for
skewers, grilling, kebabs
This is the honest compromise: it tastes like a good beef kebab with anticucho marinade on it rather than like anticuchos de corazon. Marinate no more than four hours or the vinegar makes the tender meat mushy.
6Portobello mushrooms (vegetarian)
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by volume, cut in 1-inch pieces
Thick portobello pieces soak up an anticucho marinade better than almost any meat and char to a deep savoury brown on a hot grill.
What changes
Best for
vegetarian anticuchos, skewers, grilling
Soft and juicy rather than chewy and firm, so the bite is entirely different even though the seasoning tastes right. Cut them thick, oil them well, and grill hot and fast so they brown before they release all their water.

What is Beef Heart?

Beef Heart is Beef heart, sold as corazon de res or ox heart, is the dense, very lean working muscle from the centre of a cow, and it eats far more like a coarse-grained steak than like an organ meat.

Cooking tips

Beef heart is almost pure lean muscle with very little connective tissue, so treat it like steak, not like a tough cut. Slow-cooking it for hours the way you would braise chuck makes it dry and grainy rather than tender. Grill it very hot and fast, two to three minutes a side, and pull it at medium.
Trimming is most of the work. Cut away the outer fat cap, the silvery membrane, and any pale valve, vessel or gristly tissue from inside the chambers. What you want is only the smooth dark muscle wall, which you then cut into slabs about three-quarters of an inch thick for skewers.
Cut with the grain into wide slabs for anticuchos, not against it. The strips are threaded onto skewers and the grain running the length of the piece is what keeps the meat from shredding off the stick over the fire.
The classic anticucho marinade is red wine vinegar, ground aji panca, garlic, cumin and oil, and heart benefits from a long soak of four to twenty-four hours. Any leaner steak substitute can take the same time; a tender cut like sirloin should stay in for four hours at most.
Heart is also excellent ground and mixed one part heart to three parts regular beef mince for burgers, meatballs and chili, where it adds depth without reading as organ meat. Substitutes will not give you that effect, so if that is what the recipe is doing, use beef mince plus a little finely chopped chicken heart.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave beef heart out?

Not in anticuchos de corazon, where the heart is the entire dish. What you can do is swap in flank or skirt steak at 1:1 and keep the marinade and the grilling method exactly the same, which produces something genuinely good, just not the original. In a stew or chili where heart is one meat among several, dropping it and adding an equal weight of chuck is fine.

Does beef heart taste like liver?

No, and this is the main reason people are surprised by it. Heart is a muscle, not a filtering organ, so it tastes like a strongly beefy steak with a faint iron edge, nowhere near liver's minerally bitterness. If you find liver too strong, heart is likely to be fine.

What cut of steak is closest to beef heart?

Flank steak, followed by skirt. Both are lean, coarse-grained, cheap and built for a hard sear after an acidic marinade, which is precisely the profile heart has. Avoid tender cuts like fillet, which have neither the chew nor the structure to hold up on a skewer.

Why is my beef heart tough and rubbery?

Almost always because it was overcooked. Heart has very little collagen to break down, so there is no long-cooking stage where it turns tender again. Once it goes past medium it firms up and stays firm. Pull it off the heat while the centre is still pink and let it rest a couple of minutes.

Can I use chicken hearts instead of beef heart?

Yes, and they are the best substitute if it is the organ flavour you want rather than just the texture. Use the same weight, thread several per skewer, cut the marinating time to about two hours, and grill for two to three minutes total, since they are far smaller and cook very quickly.

Related substitutes

More meat & protein substitutes

Beef Heart substitute

Other beef heart substitutes

2Skirt steak

3Chicken hearts

4Lamb or veal heart

5Sirloin or top sirloin, cubed

6Portobello mushrooms (vegetarian)