Ahead of the National Western Stock Show, sous chef Karla Baltazar and her catering team received a delivery of 100 pounds each of hearts, cheeks, liver and oxtails.

Their task? Make it edible.

Denver’s iconic stock show was hosting the second annual “Offal Party,” a celebration to highlight the leftover parts of meat that farmers often have a harder time selling in the U.S.

Offal, pronounced like “awful,” faces a stigma as Americans are more squeamish about eating internal organs than other cultures.

Rocky Mountain Oysters are one of Colorado’s most famous offal dishes. But most often offal meat ends up in landfills when Colorado farmers would rather be making money off of it instead.

The party put on by Colorado State University’s Ag Innovation Center on Saturday aimed to debunk preconceptions people may have.

It featured several chef-driven dishes made from different organs such as beef tongue tacos to let the food speak for itself.

The bison liver was the scariest to work with, at first, said Baltazar of Denver caterer SSA Group.

“One bison liver is this big,” Baltazar said, moving her gloved hand from her head to her waist to show the length when unraveled.

She then formed a circle with both her hands. That was the width.

It took four days to transform it into a ​​bison liver pâté with ginger blackberry puree on top of a puffed garlic chip and garnished with violet flowers. First, the caterers cut out the cartilage, soaked it in milk overnight to extract the bitter flavors and make it less gamey, and then processed it with chicken liver.

The evening’s menu also included oxtail potato croquettes with garlic aioli, a beef heart ragout on cornbread crostini with red pickled onion and smoked cheddar creme fraiche and a beef cheek demi with mushrooms.

“This will help if people can see the product cooked, especially in ways that they’re familiar with,” Baltazar said.

As Baltazar explained the menu in the back kitchen, a server returned for another plate of appetizers.

The oxtail potato croquettes were flying fast, he said. One guest was asking if he could get more.

Making the oxtail fried and crispy helped make the dish much less intimidating, Baltazar said.

Through the night, guests would come up to try each dish. Many would take a bite, wait a few seconds to deliberate, then nodded and raised their eyebrows for their friends or partners to also try each dish.

Some weren’t the biggest fans while others were shocked the meat wasn’t as tough as they thought it would be.

Jordan Kraft Lambert, director of Ag Innovation at CSU Spur, said she loved the bison liver pâté the most.

While some Americans have bad memories of the liver and onions their grandmothers used to make, she said liver works well when the flavors are more balanced. Many people don’t know how to do it right and liver cooking traditions are getting lost with each generation.

“Kale was not popular a few years ago. Now people like kale, and boy, Brussels sprouts have had a glow up, right?” Lambert said. “Offal meats can have that, too.”

The CSU party included a business pitch competition offering different solutions for using offal, which makes up 44% of the animal, ranging from encouraging bone broth sipping to putting it into pet food.

But offal is also readily available at grocery stores – and often cheaper, too.

Lambert suggests families can mix offal, which can be more nutrient dense, with other meats to help acquire a taste for it. Ancestral blends is the rising term for mixing typical meat cuts with offal.

“It’s just a social stigma,” Lambert said. “We can change it by marketing, by making crave worthy products that people are excited to purchase and even making it in places where people don’t even know that it’s there.”