Show Some Guts: Colorado State University Is Hosting Another Offal Party

What do organ meats and sustainable leather fashion have in common?

Well, cows. And they’re both the star of the show at the second annual Offal Party hosted by Colorado State University at  the National Western Stock Show on Saturday, January 25.

The event includes a fashion show with items made of leather, chef-prepared farm-to-table delicacies featuring offal (otherwise known as organ meat), line dancing, popup shops and a competition featuring the best business ideas for turning otherwise unwanted parts of cows into beauty, fashion, food,and pet-treat products.

The Offal Party is the brainchild of Jordan Lambert, director of Agricultural Innovation at the CSU Spur campus at the National Western Center; Lambert hopes to draw attention to the value cows provide to the food and fashion economies—and how both supply chains can be more sustainable.

Eating offal is one way to do that. However, many Americans find organ meats to be less than appetizing. “The U.S. is strange in that we don’t eat organ meats as much as other countries do,” Lambert says. “It’s culturally different here, even though organ meats are the most nutrient-dense.”

The social stigma around consuming organ meats started in the early 1900s, before refrigeration. “When you slaughtered an animal, you needed to consume it quickly," Lambert notes. "Organ meat spoiled the soonest, so you’d get rid of it first with the local community. And the people working in the slaughterhouses were often people of color.”

For every cow used for beef in the U.S., Americans get less than 66 percent of the value of that animal; much of the cow is sent to a landfill. Lambert’s mission is to help people understand how we can be less wasteful.
And that starts with getting people excited about foods they most likely haven’t tried before.

“This is a safe space to try organ meat,” Lambert says. “I tell the audience that if you see someone try something and spit it out, congratulate them. That means they tried it.”

Prepared by award-winning chefs, much of the food will have an Italian spin, with dishes like beef oxtail croquette with garlic aioli, beef tongue tacos, mushroom arancini, bison liver pate, beef heart ragout, and beef cheek agnolotti. Last year, QR codes were next to each dish so that people could rate it; according to Lambert, of 150 attendees, 149 found a dish they liked.

“Almost everyone has a nightmare scenario of being fed liver and onions by a grandma, but grandmas were bad at preparing liver,” Lamber says. “We want to make organ meats accessible and celebrate the entire body of the animal.”

In addition to food stations and passed appetizers, there will be the Genuine Leather Fashion Show. Twenty students from CSU's design and merchandising school have created looks ranging from “Punk Cowgirl” to “Chaps Reimagined,” and even some horses will be dressed to impress.

Offal Party, 5:30 to 10 p.m. Saturday, January 25, Stockyards Event Center, 5004 National Western Drive. Get tickets, $70, and information here.