Heart is a Muscle

If you have only ever met heart on a yakitori menu, it can sound like an odd thing to put in a dog's bowl.

It isn't. Heart is the busiest muscle in the animal, and using it is part of a broader idea: when you take a wild deer, you use the whole animal, not only the prime cuts.

That is the ethic Nagano's game processors work by, and it is the one behind our topper, VENISON + APPLE.

The heart in our recipe comes from the same wild sika deer (ニホンジカ [nihonjika, Japanese sika deer]) as the muscle meat.

An organ that behaves like meat

Anatomically, the heart is an organ. In our recipe, it functions like meat.

It adds a deep flavour, and the meat is dark red, dense and close-grained. It is firmer than a steak but clean and mild, without the strong note liver carries, and it rounds out the flavour of the whole recipe.

Heart naturally contains taurine, an amino acid concentrated in muscle tissue, together with vitamin B12, heme iron and riboflavin. Coenzyme Q10, a compound present naturally in meat, occurs in its highest amounts in heart tissue.

A prized cut for people, too

Japan has never treated the heart as waste. As ハツ [hatsu], it is one of the more sought-after skewers in yakitori and horumon [offal] cooking, valued for a firm, clean bite and a deep, savoury flavour.

Japan isn't alone in this. Peru's signature dish, anticucho, is beef heart grilled on skewers, and Britain has traditional heart dishes of its own.

Because it is so meat-like, heart may well be the first step towards eating more of the animal.

The care is the quality

Wild game has to be handled quickly and carefully once it is taken, and organs such as the heart faster than the rest.

Our deer are processed the same day they are taken, at a meat processing facility in Nagano, and by the same method used for venison prepared for people. Every animal is recorded: where it was taken, when, and by whom.

Nagano's game industry works to the prefecture's Shinshu gibier hygiene guidelines (信州ジビエ衛生管理ガイドライン), and our venison comes from a processor operating to that standard.

That is why we can include heart from wild deer in our recipe with confidence.

We include heart in VENISON + APPLE because it belongs there: a carefully processed wild muscle with a deep, savoury flavour. Our recipe uses a single animal protein: deer, and only deer.

Nothing wasted, nothing hidden.
Just add a spoonful to your dog's usual meal.

We put the same care into our dogs' food as we do into our own. Respecting the flavour and the story behind every ingredient is at the heart of how Karuizawa Harvest makes food.

Notes & sources

• Heart composition (taurine, coenzyme Q10, vitamin B12, heme iron, riboflavin): USDA FoodData Central, Spitze et al. (2003), UC Davis (PDF)

• Heart classed as muscle meat in whole-food feeding: Perfectly Rawsome