In most of the world, cow foot is used in soups. Such as this one from Ghana found in the University Heights section of the Bronx, where several restaurants from the West African country are located. In this soup, cow foot is the star of the show, with all its textures showcased in a sparkling and slightly gluey broth.

This modest Mexican grocery in the Bronx’s hilly University Heights offers a brief list of tacos among other deli fare and juices. The pig tripe taco is particularly good, squirted with a bit of crema, and it illustrates an important idea regarding tripe — two different organs are both identified as mammalian tripe, the small intestine and the stomach lining. “Tripe” in taquerias usually refers to the intestinal variety.

Slicked with thick red chile oil, ox tongue and tripe are a Sichuan appetizing classic. At hipster Sichuan restaurant Alley 41 in Flushing, a ramped-up version of the dish a little spicier than usual and decorated with crushed peanuts is presented, in a space that seems like a concrete bunker in outer space.

This ancient loading dock café is one of the few still operating in the Garment Center; once they were a prominent feature of the neighborhood. El Sabroso specializes in Ecuadorian fare, and guatita is one of its best dishes, a turmeric-laced stew of potatoes and honeycomb cow tripe. Spoon on the housemade hot sauce called “aji.”

Nothing beats the gluey and chewy texture of cow foot, and its ghostly white color. At the city’s only restaurant hailing from Mexico’s western state of Sinaloa, this variety meat is cubed and deployed on a bean-slathered tostada and then heaped with shredded lettuce and dried cheese, making a very mellow treat. Squirt on the chipotle salsa.

This British country grocery store is also a bakery that concentrates on savory pies, the most famous of which is steak-and-kidney pie. The pie shell is perfect in its rich flakiness, the filling flavored with black pepper and brown gravy. The cubes of steak and pork kidney are the same size, with the organ being a little more rubbery than the meat. As a gateway to enjoying kidneys, this pie is unsurpassed.

The cuisine of Dongbei (once known as Manchuria) offers some of China’s most delicate organ and variety meat presentations. One found at Auntie Guan’s on the northern border of Greenwich Village is pig skin aspic: swatches of pale skin mired in a collagen-rich jelly, sided with a vinegar and soy dipping sauce. This dish reminds us that skin is indeed an organ.

Bone marrow is an organ, too, an essential part of the lymphatic system that generates blood cells. Split the bone, roast it, and scoop out the marrow with a marrow spoon or knife and spread it on bread for a real treat. At newcomer The Bari, the bovine bone marrow is further heaped with homemade kimchi, and toasts are provided.

Pork ruffle is actually the mesentery of the pig, an undulant shelf of flesh that keeps the intestines in place. At Filipino bar Ugly Kitchen, the pork ruffle is served as a deep-fried snack, presented with a tart soy dipping sauce, and the variety meat tastes more fleshy than fatty, but is very, very rich, indeed. 

Perhaps the most common of all organ meats is the chicken liver, a small globular filter organ colored a deep reddish brown that melts perfectly into a pate or mousse. It constitutes a signature dish in both Jewish and Tuscan cuisine. At this Italian restaurant, coarsely pureed and herbed chicken livers are served with toast and olive oil to make do-it-yourself crostini, and there’s nothing better to pair it with than a glass of chianti.

If tired of the usual chicken liver crostini, check out this sawdat djaj sandwich. Wrapped in a big pita like a flattened burrito, it contains full chicken livers sauteed and flavored with lemon, then garnished with parsley, pickles, and the fiery garlic sauce called toum. Every bite is a tart delight. 

You can’t do better, organ-wise, than visiting a Sichuan restaurant. In addition to entrée hot pots and stir fries, the menus often offer apps rife with offal, usually slicked with chile oil and dotted with cracked Sichuan peppercorns, making them hot and tingly. At Flaming Kitchen, the slippery and translucent beef tendon is so prepared, and constitutes one of the menu’s standout dishes.

Like their northern and western Chinese counterparts, Cantonese restaurants mount menus rich in offal. One dish seen occasionally in Manhattan’s Chinatown is duck tongues. Braised in thick soy sauce at Ping’s, they come out plump and tasty, though each also contains cartilage that must be discreetly spit out.

Nearly every Latin American country has its own version of tripe soup, not only filling and delicious, but sometimes thought to be a hangover remedy. The cow tripe soup pancita is available most weekends and sometimes during the week at Victoria Deli, a grocery store turned into a taqueria while also remaining a classic Mexican bodega.

Did you know blood is a tissue? It figures as a thickener in many cuisines, including Thai, Italian, and Filipino. Beloved in Argentina and France, pig blood sausage (called “black pudding”) is also a part of an English breakfast, and a similar sausage, only thicker, is standard fare in Guyana. At Singh’s, it sits coiled on the steam table, and you can buy it by the pound.

Loamy, loamy beef or pork blood sausage! Usually mixed with grains such as rice, the blood gives deep color and subtle flavor, sometimes rendering the link crumbly inside. In Korean cuisine, the blood sausage is called soondae, and at Gowanus’ Insa, it’s served with perilla salt and sprinkled with scallions. And remember that blood sausage contains another organ, too: the sausage casing is intestine.

Cow spleen isn’t one of the first things that comes to mind when you think of Italian cuisine, yet it plays an important part in the menu of Sicilian snack shops, or focaccerias. These places sell small sandwiches on rolls, and one of the signatures is vastedda: cow spleen sliced thin and piled on a roll with a slice of caciocavallo cheese and schmear of ricotta. The spleen tastes almost like liver.

The Turks have a way with calf’s liver. They cut the organ into small cubes, dust them with flour and spices, then saute them, resulting in a mellow treat with a very liver-y flavor. Seaside is a Staten Island restaurant not far from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and also a stone’s throw from South Beach. Calf’s liver is available in then combo app platter, shown here, but also in a single serving.  

It’s not just mammals that have organs: In the dish Bishkek salad, named after Kyrgyzstan’s capital, cod liver is used to great effect. Oily and tasting almost like calf’s liver, it is concealed under a heap of boiled and shredded eggs and rice and garnished with a few black olives. Other than a little mayo, it needs no further dressing at this pan-Central Asian restaurant in Sheepshead Bay (a neighborhood that sounds very organ-y).