If you’ve eaten to build muscle for any stretch of time I can guarantee you’ve gotten sick of eating the same old foods. Fortunately, the world is ripe with high-quality, exotic meats for building muscle and while saving the planet.

I big promise? Indeed. But well worth it.

Mike Says: First Things First – Beyond The Standard Cuts

Steak, chicken breasts, sausages, steak, ground beef-anything… BACON!

These are a few ‘standard’ types of meat, cuts of meats, and ways of cooking these meats that have cemented their way into the public cooking psyche.

Ease, taste, availability, and ease have become the predominant options when it comes to getting protein into our meathead muscles these days. (chicken anyone?)

But…. is there more?

Are there other options that we may be missing?

Options that will not only add or preserve our precious muscle but help performance, improve and aid our health, save us money, help the planet (bear with me) AND still taste AMAZING?!

Why yes, yes there is.

I’ve witnessed many disillusioned meatheads stuffing down plain chicken breasts far too many times.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to 3 options that will deliver on the promises made above: improve health and performance, help your bottom line, taste fantastic AND – get this – help the planet.

And with this, pay respect to more of those animals that have essentially given their lives so you can eventually greedily chew, swallow, burp and fart your way through the fussy-minded selection of their best bits.

Now, before you reel in anticipated disgust of eating your fill of little known body parts, let me state now:

I am going to provide you with 3 (kind of 4 actually) recipes that you will LOVE, that also happen do all of the above.

There are a few parts of most animals we kill for food that we largely ignore these days. There are also animals that are largely getting ignored in the first place as well, all of which are jam-packed full of ready-to-be utilized nutrition and tasty goodness.
Namely; offal, bones, ‘cheaper’ cuts, and wild meat.

Let’s look into these Exotic Animal Meats For Building Muscle

• Offal: why not start strong, hey?! Offal is one of those things that usually has people gag, or close to it, even at the suggestion.

So first off I would challenge this – have you ever tried it? We’re not talking about getting into the super ‘unique’ like tripe, pigs uterus, or asshole, but a few simple standards – liver, kidneys & hearts – just to whet our appetites.

Differing in taste, but with flavor for days, done correctly these meats are loaded with beneficial nutrients that will help any diet (in fact I consider them to be part of the real superfoods). Diced calf’s liver fried with garlic, mushrooms, and wilted spinach. Lamb’s kidney is done with bacon and onions.

Chicken hearts fried with ginger and soy sauce… these are a few simple recipe, but below I’ll provide an even more sneaky one.

Just think of all those animals you gladly eat selected meat from, and now think how many less you’d need if you also took these organs from them to fill up your diet…

• ‘Cheaper’ cuts: I used inverted commas here because they’ve only become cheaper cuts due to how we’ve slowly selected the more tender and quicker to cook meats. When we look at the cattle beast, a large amount of the animal can turn into sausages and ground beef, but a lot of this is in lesser know and used cuts such as blade, chuck, and skirt steaks.

The kinds that if you threw them in a hot pan to fry, would soon turn to some akin to rubber.

This is why we utilize the ease of slow cooking (and slow cookers themselves – even easier) and turn these incredibly affordable AND flavor-packed meats into dishes to die for. Slow cooking will release flavors and nutrients sometimes hard to come by through rapid cooking methods, all the while saving you money and better utilizing more of the animal.

• Wild meat: This might seem a bit of an odd one, but bear with me here… for those that have enjoyed the delights of wild meat before, you don’t need to be sold on its immense flavor, so for those who haven’t – trust me – wild meat is some of the tastiest (and coincidently healthiest) meat one can eat.

{Eric’s Note: I concur, wild meat is awesome. }

The reason I’ve included it in this list to cover all of the bases above is that every day around the industrial world we are culling countless animals in order to ensure wild numbers don’t get ‘out of hand’.

This I can understand, having wild animals overrunning farms and towns could be somewhat of a problem. However, what I can’t get my head around is the waste-less culling.

Sure, if the animals are being butchered and eaten/used then awesome – bring it on! But sadly a vast majority aren’t, because they’re often in more remote areas, they’re simply left to rot and decompose.

To me, this is a travesty – perfectly healthy animals being killed and left, therefore, being totally disrespected. The least we could do for this animal is treat its life with some respect and actually utilize its body, not just leave it where it falls.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t quite worked out the solution here, but with millions of animals dying in this way and millions more hungry mouths to feed, I MEAN SOMEONE DO THE MATH ALREADY!

Plus did I mention the taste?! We’re going to use goat as a recipe, as these can be quite a common wild meat.

• Bones: This is at this stage a bit of an afterthought, seeing as we were kind of talking about meat, but these will not only come in handy with some recipes above but also if you think back 3 seconds to my big point around respecting animals that are killed to satisfy our hunger… not using their bones is to also disrespect them.

There is so much amazing nutrition in the bones of animals just waiting for us to benefit from, plus they’re also ‘as cheap as chips, saving you at the bottom line.

What we’re mostly talking about here is making bone broths that not only contain loads of micronutrients, but also gelatin which actually acts as a protein sparer – essentially meaning that the protein you consume with them will be better utilized.

In effect meaning that you not only have to buy and consume less meat but hey presto we again reduce the demand for meat by simply consuming more bone broths (and therefore gelatin) with our meals.

Right now there are millions of animals being killed each year with per capita meat consumption averaging around 42kg (92lbs).

Yes, we could encourage some people to eat a little less and the immense effects on the environment would drop, however, if we educate people to start utilizing more of the animals that are already being killed, we could actually see a drop in the number of overall animals having to be bred and killed for our consumption.

I know, I basically just solved global warming and global hunger with these exotic meats for building muscle. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

Seriously though, if we can just get over our fussy need to only select the best parts of our favorite animals, we could actually make a dent in the global trashing of the planet and help feed a few more hungry mouths. Plus help your own pocket AND your health.

I mean, where is there a flaw in that?!

What it takes now is some motivation to do so, right? I know that. So here are 3 recipes (actually 4, you’ll see) that will do all of the above, plus have you lining up for more.

Exotic Meat Recipe One: Liver & beef meatballs on steamed broccoli with homemade tomato sauce

You’ll need:
Meatballs :
• 3.5ounces/100g of veal liver
• 1.3lbs/500g ground beef
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste (use half and keep other for sauce)
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed (use half and keep other for sauce)
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil (use half and keep other for sauce)
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon grated parmesan
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup of nut meal (make your own by putting almonds into the food processor, or buy from LSA meal) – you may need more here, so have 1 cup ready
Sauce:
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 small onion, peeled and diced
• 1/2 cup of red wine
• 1 head of broccoli, washed and chopped
You’ll do:
1) Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C

2) Cut 100g liver in small chunks and process in a food processor.

3) Add liver to a bowl and add ground beef (grass-fed etc). To this add the rest of the meatball ingredients and rock salt and pepper.

4) Next comes mixing it all together and rolling it into small balls and place on a large oven tray and into the oven for 20-25 minutes.

5) To make a quick tomato sauce, add the tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, tomato paste, and red wine to the food processor. Once mixed, add to a saucepan and heat. You want to reduce this down to a thick sauce, so keep an eye on it over low heat.

6) Once the meatballs and sauce are almost ready, boil some water in a saucepan over high heat and add the broccoli to a steamer to cook for 4-5 minutes.

7) Once done, put some broccoli into a bowl, top with meatballs, and then sauce
This would make enough meatballs for 3-4 people. You may want to add more broccoli and sauce or have leftover meatballs.

Exotic Meat Recipe Two: Man soup (with homemade bone broth)

You’ll need:
1) Diced meat – such as blade, skirt, or chuck steak – dusted in coconut flour
2) Beef or chicken stock (if you’ve made yourself, the volume will vary. If you have a lot, don’t worry, you’ll leave this to boil and reduce down for longer – you can also have done this beforehand) Check out an easy slow cooker recipe for your own bone broth here.
• Roughly 3.3floz/100ml red wine
• 1 stick of Celery, chopped
• 1 leak, chopped
• 3 tablespoons Tomato paste
• 1 medium sweet potato, chopped into 1-2cm cubes
• 1/2 teaspoon Turmeric
• 1/8 teaspoon Nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon Cumin
• Coconut oil
• Salt and pepper

You’ll do:

1) Heat a pan, add coconut oil, and brown the meat for 2-3 minutes, stirring throughout. Once it’s ready, remove it from heat and replace it with celery, leek, and shallots. Brown off for a few minutes then pour the red wine in to deglaze the pan and get all the flavor off. Gently pour this into a large pot with the meat.

2) At this point add your broth (or if the stock is in the pot already because you’ve followed the recipe at the link above and have reduced the point of reducing it down – add the meat to the pot)

3) Bring to the boil and then add the sweet potato, celery, tomato paste, spices, and seasoning
4) Stir gently until mixed, return to the boil and lower to a simmer

5) Leave this for 45-60 minutes, stirring every now and then, If you have a very large amount of liquid, leave it uncovered to allow it to reduce down. If you have the right amount, cover gently with a pot lid

6) Once it’s ready it should have thickened up somewhat, the meat should be tender and the sweet potato soft. Add more tomato paste if desired and season to taste.
Note) You might want to serve this with a piece of quality bread, toasted and covered in butter
This should serve 4 people

Exotic Meat Recipe Three: Wild goat curry

You’ll need:
• 2.2lbs/1kg of wild goat meat (shoulder would be ideal, but let’s not be fussy), diced

Meat marinade:

• 2 tsp garlic (minced)
• 3 tsp ginger (minced)
• 2 – 3 fresh green chillies (minced)
• 1/2 tsp chili powder
• 1 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 3 tsp coriander powder
• 2 tsp cumin powder
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 2 tsp salt

For the curry:
• 12 cloves
• 4-star anise
• 2 cinnamon stick
• 12 cardamom pods
• 45 curry leaves (roughly)
• 1 onion (diced)
• 2 cans of crushed tomatoes
• 4 tablespoons of tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 2 cups of stock/bone broth

Accompany:
• 2 cups of quinoa
• 1 cup of bone broth/stock
• Small handful of dried cranberries
• Handful of almonds
• Juice and rind from one lemon
• I bunch of fresh coriander, chopped

You’ll do:
1) The night before adding all of the marinade ingredients to a bowl with the meat and nix about. Put in the fridge overnight, then remove from fridge 30-60 minutes before cooking.

2) Then when you’re ready to go, in a large pot add the oil. Once hot, add the spices let cook for a minute before adding the onion and leaving to cook for about 5 minutes.

3) Then add the, now close to 24 hours, marinated goat meat. Stir and cook all this meat for 10 minutes.

4) Then, add the 2 cups of stock, crushed tomatoes, and tomato paste, mix and stir and put the lid on.

5) Allow cooking at a slow rolling boil, checking every now and then, for 1 and a half hours.

6) Once close to done, make the quinoa to accompany the curry, by adding the quinoa to a saucepan, add 1 cup of stock and 3 cups of water, bring to the boil then simmer, adding the cranberries, almonds, lemon juice, and rind. Once cooked, remove from the heat.

7) When the curry is ready, add the coriander just before serving, with some salt and pepper.
This should easily serve 6 people (making a lot of this makes sense as you need all the spice ingredients anyway)

And that is how you push out of the ordinary and make meals that have added flavor, nutrition, and ethical punch.

Muscles gained, money saved, and the world basically saved.

You. Are. Welcome.

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J From The Author, Mike Campbell: Unleash your Alpha to Eat like a man, train like a beast, operate like a gentleman & become a legend. A place for men to get motivated & informed, share & become the best man you can be here. Join the Community on Facebook for Daily Updates and Upcoming Events.