Photo by mmmyoso on Flickr

If it's Friday, it must be Offal of the Week! Brought to you by Ryan Adams, author of the blog Nose to Tail at Home, each week we highlight a different part of the animal that you've always wanted to work with, but were afraid to ask your butcher for. This week: Beef Tendon.

At this point in our offal journey, we've worked through the vast majority of the major organs and extremeties. But there are still plenty of parts of the animal that, while perhaps not as common to your average American, are in wide edible circulation elsewhere in the world. Like last week's chicken feet, this week's cut is yet another staple of Asian cuisine: Beef tendon.

Tendon is by definition, "a tough band of fibrous connective tissue that usually connects muscle to bone and is capable of withstanding tension." It's essentially cartilage, which means it's tough as hell and can be intimidating to the home cook (even the most fearless ones — don't feel bad about it). What Wikipedia doesn't tell you is that when properly prepared, tendon can be absolutely fantastic.  Some people are even claiming that it's the new pork belly.

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