So I got this beef liver....Now what?

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Thundercougarfalconbird

Thundercougarfalconbird

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I got a couple pounds of frozen beef liver and I can't find any appetizing recipes online. My SWMBO is a picky eater so I'm looking for something a bit more subtle than liver and onions. I don't have any experience with liver and am a little intimidated.
Looking for good recipes and tips :tank:
 
Cut it up into (roughly) 1 x 2 inch pieces & use it for bait next time you go catfishing; catfish love liver. Catfish taste so much better than liver & there are so many recipes for it, your swmbo will love it, 99% chance of a win/win situation there.
Either that, or feed it to the dog & go for some chinese takeout. Again, 99% chance of a win/win situation.
Sorry, I'm not more helpful, I just can't stand liver unless it's in the form of liverwurst & that's made from pork liver.

OK, here's what I came up with:

http://www.food.com/recipe/beef-liver-chinese-style-79353

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/...h-fig-chinese-vinegar-syrup-recipe/index.html

http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/14676/spicy-thai-liver.aspx

The ultimate liver recipe source:
http://www.cookitsimply.com/category-0020-014i0.html

Hope this info helps, I still think you'd be better off using it for bait. :D
Regards, GF.
 
You might want to sautee it with onions and spices, then add some red wine, and then take it for a spin in the cuisinart. Then fold in cooked polenta and put in a loaf pan and leave in the fridge for a few hours. I would then slice thickly, dust with seasoned flour and saute in butter and veggie oil until you have a nice crust.

Serve as a sandwich on whitebread with hot sauce.
 
Ooooooor, you could make Jewish style chopped liver if you are willing to buy chicken livers as well?
 
CreamyGoodness said:
You might want to sautee it with onions and spices, then add some red wine, and then take it for a spin in the cuisinart. Then fold in cooked polenta and put in a loaf pan and leave in the fridge for a few hours. I would then slice thickly, dust with seasoned flour and saute in butter and veggie oil until you have a nice crust.

Serve as a sandwich on whitebread with hot sauce.
Click to expand...

Ya know, that don't sound half bad. For me, the trick is to cover up the beef liver flavour AND (this is the tricky part) the beef liver texture. I've never tried polenta, but from what I understand, it's basically something like compressed grits. Out of curiosity, what spices would you suggest Creamy? No, I'm not being sarcastic, I'd really like to know. If there is a recipe out there that could actually make beef or chicken liver palatable to me, then the OP's swmbo would most likely love it & I might actually be able to eat liver in some form other trhan liverwurst...

Which tastes GREAT, but the last couple times I've eaten it, I've had, ummmm, shall we say, "gastric distress." Not sure why, ate it for years with no ill effects whatsoever, now, it still tastes great, but hurts later; much like cheesecake or ice cream (lactose intolerant).

Sorry didn't mean to threadjack or share too much; hopefully I didn't cross any lines there.
Regards, GF.
 
Soak in milk. Keeps longer. Also you can make a farce or flour and pan fry. Arugula, quick pickled red onions (then toss on grill), crispy liver slices, and top with a nice balsamic and finishing salt.
 
grind it to a paste, mix with fatty ground pork, equal proportions pork and liver, add salt, pepper, 2 or 3 eggs depending on volume of meat, add small amount of brandy, then pressure can or bake in a terrine, then you have homemade beef liver paté, enjoy!
 
Look up the recipe for "Savoury Ducks" or "******ts" usually that is pigs liver which is a very strong tasting liver, but I suppose you could change it for beef liver, I used to live with a Russian girl who hated liver but she loved "******ts" (and no we're not talking about poofs) personally you can't beat dipping the slices of liver in seasoned flour and frying it with onions.
 
If you don't like the texture or taste, why go through so much trouble?
Liver has a very strong distinct taste. Some love it, some hate it. I can't stand it.
The only way to have anything from liver that I like is to cook it with onions, then throw the liver away and eat the onions.
 
gratus fermentatio said:
Ya know, that don't sound half bad. For me, the trick is to cover up the beef liver flavour AND (this is the tricky part) the beef liver texture. I've never tried polenta, but from what I understand, it's basically something like compressed grits. Out of curiosity, what spices would you suggest Creamy? No, I'm not being sarcastic, I'd really like to know. If there is a recipe out there that could actually make beef or chicken liver palatable to me, then the OP's swmbo would most likely love it & I might actually be able to eat liver in some form other trhan liverwurst...

Which tastes GREAT, but the last couple times I've eaten it, I've had, ummmm, shall we say, "gastric distress." Not sure why, ate it for years with no ill effects whatsoever, now, it still tastes great, but hurts later; much like cheesecake or ice cream (lactose intolerant).

Sorry didn't mean to threadjack or share too much; hopefully I didn't cross any lines there.
Regards, GF.
Click to expand...

I would keep the seasoning light. Salt, Pepper, a little cayenne, maybe a little sage and garlic powder. You'll be adding hot-sauce so a lot of the spices will get muted.

Now that I think about it, though, I cant see how putting a little adobo in the flour could hurt...

Also note that polenta is simply finely ground grits. I cant see any reason you couldnt use grits or even corn meal successfully.
 
I haven't had much beef liver since living up here but i recall taking bacon grease from the jar by the stove and melting that into the pan, slicing the liver thin and coating with some seasoned flour, bunch of onions also sliced thin. Start the onions in the bacon grease and as they start to get translucent, lay in your liver slices. Cook to a medium rare/well and MMMM-MMMHHH!
We have been taking some of our moose/caribou liver and converting it to liver sausage, very mild and pleasant. My wife, refuses liver, will actually nibble the moose or caribou liver sausage. I still keep bacon grease by the stove and I save some of my liver, sliced thin and cooked as above. One of the best breakfasts I have had was fresh moose liver, eggs, onions, a little sage, parsley, salt and pepper cooked by a native friend out on the Kuskokwim River by McGrath.
 
Subsailor said:
I haven't had much beef liver since living up here but i recall taking bacon grease from the jar by the stove and melting that into the pan, slicing the liver thin and coating with some seasoned flour, bunch of onions also sliced thin. Start the onions in the bacon grease and as they start to get translucent, lay in your liver slices. Cook to a medium rare/well and MMMM-MMMHHH!
We have been taking some of our moose/caribou liver and converting it to liver sausage, very mild and pleasant. My wife, refuses liver, will actually nibble the moose or caribou liver sausage. I still keep bacon grease by the stove and I save some of my liver, sliced thin and cooked as above. One of the best breakfasts I have had was fresh moose liver, eggs, onions, a little sage, parsley, salt and pepper cooked by a native friend out on the Kuskokwim River by McGrath.
Click to expand...

I always thought elk and moose livers were too loaded with nutrients for humans to digest (a la bear livers). This is really interesting. I am thinking about making my own liver sausages soonish, so this gives me a lot of ideas. I wonder, if I use chicken livers, if I could use schmaltz and gribenes rather than bacon and bacon fat.
 
My mom ONLY cooked CALF liver, never had beef liver. It was always cooked in the electric skillet with BACON and onions:

Cook bacon until half cooked, move to the side of skillet (less heat). Add onions, cook half-way, move to the side. Add calf liver and cook in bacon fat until cooked through (but not like shoe leather). Serve the liver with the onions & bacon on top. Pretty tasty.

MC
 
CreamyGoodness said:
You might want to sautee it with onions and spices, then add some red wine, and then take it for a spin in the cuisinart. Then fold in cooked polenta and put in a loaf pan and leave in the fridge for a few hours. I would then slice thickly, dust with seasoned flour and saute in butter and veggie oil until you have a nice crust.

Serve as a sandwich on whitebread with hot sauce.
Click to expand...

This sounds great. (as does subsailors post on p2)
I hadn't realized liver was so rarely eaten. It was given to me when we bought a half steer and I hate to just throw away food. :mug:
 
Thundercougarfalconbird said:
Still haven't cooked it yet. I figure I can just bread and deep fry it? Everything is good deep fried right?
Click to expand...

Oh yes! And it doesn't have to be cooked well done either.
 
CreamyGoodness said:
I always thought elk and moose livers were too loaded with nutrients for humans to digest (a la bear livers). This is really interesting. I am thinking about making my own liver sausages soonish, so this gives me a lot of ideas. I wonder, if I use chicken livers, if I could use schmaltz and gribenes rather than bacon and bacon fat.
Click to expand...

Been eating moose and caribou since 1997 and I'm doing OK.
I know what schmalz is but I don't know what gribenes is.
 
I'm probably spelling it wrong. Its chicken skin that has been crisped up to a bacon-like texture. Taste fantastic. I love the idea of tail to snout eating, and in this case tail to beak.
 
Hey the Japanese have been putting crispy salmon skin in sushi for a long time, there's something to be said about it!
 
Hm wow lots of neat ideas, I will have to try some these.

So far I've been simply thawing the beef liver, leaving it raw, cutting into small pieces with kitchen shears, and mixing with homemade lactofermented mustard, and bamn, down the hatch. Not bad at all really and it is really fast. It's a challenge to down a 1lb of beef liver within a day or two that way, but my cat is always there and more than willing to help me out (sans the mustard of course).

Sometimes if I think of it in advance, I cover the liver with cold water and add a bit of vinegar and let it sit overnight in the fridge. That does seem to make it a bit tastier. Supposedly it helps draw out any toxins in the liver though I'm not sure.
 
CreamyGoodness said:
I always thought elk and moose livers were too loaded with nutrients for humans to digest (a la bear livers).
Click to expand...

I remember reading that somewhere too, something about people dying after eating polar bear liver, and it being attributed to vitamin D poisoning. But then much much later it was discovered it wasn't vitamin D poisoning at all, it was in fact cadmium poisoning, that the polar bear livers had concentrated cadmium into them?
 
kh54s10 said:
Cook it, cut it into small cubes.... then feed it to the cat!
Click to expand...

Sure absolutely the cat should get some and other organ meats and innards as well. Doesn't need to be cooked though esp for a cat. Cats don't cook mice or grasshopers or anything they catch in the field, they just eat it.

I'm all for eating good tasting food, but for me knowing it is something that is good to eat makes it taste good too. Liver and other organs are very missing from a typical 'modern' diet. There's a reason cats and other animals dive right into the organs and other innards and fatty parts, and often leave the lean muscle meat for the scavengers.
 
porcupine73 said:
Liver and other organs are very missing from a typical 'modern' diet. There's a reason cats and other animals dive right into the organs and other innards and fatty parts, and often leave the lean muscle meat for the scavengers.
Click to expand...

Agreed! Look at many of the third world diets, they still ingest nearly every scrap of any animal (protein) they obtain often including insects, grubs and worms.
 
Absolutely, interesting you mention insects. I've been wanting to look into that more. One of the best 'nutrition' books I've ever read, Cure Tooth Decay, mentions it briefly, but the author thought it was so 'fringe' he didn't really go into depth about it.
 
I raised button quail for a couple of years and had a couple of bins of waxworms and mealworms. My kids all know of my eating adventures when I was younger and traveling around and would dare me to eat the little wriggling things. I have had them raw, fried (my favorite), dried and sauteed. I have done the same with earthworms, crickets/grasshopper (remove them long jumping legs), ants and ant larvae and a scorpion.
I figure I love Shrimp, Crabs and Escargot and they look like sea going bugs; why can't I eat land ones?
 
Subsailor said:
I raised button quail for a couple of years and had a couple of bins of waxworms and mealworms. My kids all know of my eating adventures when I was younger and traveling around and would dare me to eat the little wriggling things. I have had them raw, fried (my favorite), dried and sauteed. I have done the same with earthworms, crickets/grasshopper (remove them long jumping legs), ants and ant larvae and a scorpion.
I figure I love Shrimp, Crabs and Escargot and they look like sea going bugs; why can't I eat land ones?
Click to expand...

Wow very nice! That sounds awesome. I'm going to have to work up to that. Ok I've had a lot of homebrew so far this evening ... Ah your descriptions, they make me yearn for Alaska though I've never been there. There's a guy around her who has a seafood store who is from Alaska and he and his son actually catch their own salmon under permit and some other types of seafood to sell in their store. He has some videos of people he's taken on a tour up there, and it just looks amazing.
 
Having said all of that, there is just one thing (so far) I haven't been able force myself to try and I had the opportunity, twice.

Baluts: a fertilized duck embryo that is boiled and eaten in the shell. It is commonly sold as streetfood in the Philippines.

I just cannot get past the appearance of it.
 
Um yah I can envision maybe what that must look like ... so ... hm .. ok ... maybe lots of homebrew ... don't look at it ... smell something you really like while you ingest it ... and then gulp! it's done! Ok maybe not that easy ...
 
How funny, one of the things I am excited to do sometime between now and when I am too old to chew or digest things is try balut. I can wrap my head around that, albeit with some effort. Bugs? Much more difficult.
 
Goofynewfie said:
And I was told it was weird that I tried porcupine
Click to expand...

Good stuff, that and racoon and squirrels when I was growing up. My grandpa told me skunk was good but I never had the opportunity to find out and I ain't never seen a skunk up here..
 
Subsailor said:
I agree with this thought also. My pork has to be purchased fresh from one of the farmers up here but it sure is tasty!
Click to expand...

At my restaurant we set it up with a local farmer so that we have our own set of pigs raised. We choose what we feed it, how big/ old we want it, then kill and butcher it ourselves. Completely human and as little environmental impact as possible. Pretty sweet.
 

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