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The Plan: How to Eat Liver Without Tasting It
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Holy Cow
You may recall that our beef comes directly from my dad’s pasture, by way of the local butcher.
There are numerous benefits from this arrangement–including the cost and quality of the meat–but there was one aspect I hadn’t considered: When you buy an entire cow, you truly get the entire cow.
So now I have all sorts of interesting and exotic items in my freezer, like tongue, heart, tail and liver. Holy cow!
At first, I kept forgetting they were in there. Then, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with them.
What’s so Great about Liver?
We regularly feed the boys high quality liverwurst from US Wellness Meats, but Mr. Native Texan and I still cannot bring ourselves to ingest the stuff. It’s so incredibly good for you, but has a strong taste and texture.
Sally Fallon says this about organ meats, and liver in particular:
Organ meats are extremely rich in fat-soluble vitamins A and D, as well as essential fatty acids, important very-long-chain superunsaturated fatty acids and the whole gamut of macro and trace minerals….Not only does liver provide copper, zinc, iron and vitamins A and D in abundance, but it is also a rich source of antioxidants–substances that help your own liver remove toxic substances from the body. ~Nourishing Traditions, p. 299
But I Don’t Want to Taste It
So when I read Katie’s post “Recipes” for Liver: How to Eat Beef Liver (Without Tasting It), I knew I’d hit on the perfect way to incorporate all that frozen liver into our diet…without tasting it.
It turns out that Sally Fallon recommends a similar approach to incorporating organ meats into the diet:
If you cannot get your family to eat organ meats when served as such, there are plenty of ways to add them to their food without their knowledge. All ground meat dishes can be made with a combination of ground heart and ground muscle meat. Poached brains [!] can be chopped up and added to any ground meat dish, as can grated raw liver. ~Nourishing Traditions, p. 299
The Plan
I’m not quite ready for the poached brains part, but this (above) is what five packages of frozen liver looks like, thawing in a bowl on the counter. My plan is to follow Sally and Katie’s recommendations, shredding the liver and freezing it in tiny portions to be added to ground beef dishes.
I’ll let you know how it goes. (Wish me luck!)
Do you have any experience with organ meats?
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How funny that this topic came up today. A friend &I were just having a conversation about liver!!! I happen to really like it but it must be prepared dredged in a mixture of flour,salt and pepper, fried with bacon and onions. I will be the first to say it is the worst thing to cook…the feel of it is yucky, but the flavor great. With that being said, the bacon and bacon grease are not at all healthy for you..catch twenty-two.
Shredding does sound like a good option, I’ll be watching for a post on that.
Keep up the great blog, I enjoy your variety of topics.
I have to say, I’m a liver lover too. Calves liver is the mildest and what I’ve always had. When I was on Weight Watchers many, many years ago, you had to eat liver once a week…not fried, of course. So I would buy it thinly sliced and throw it on the grill. Excellent!! My boys would even eat it. I think they thought it was steak…ha, ha! But sautéed with onions and then smothered in gravy (the southern way) is best. Yum Yum!!
Interesting…..I grew up eating calves liver served with mashed potatoes and onions and chicken livers served with rice. One or the other was on the table @ least every other week. Am certain it was a fairly cheap, our parents liked it and there were 5 kids. I not so fondly recall Mom preparing it and looked to be a lot of work. On the down side my 3 brothers were major picky and it was a challenge to get them to eat a few bites.
i agree there are many nutritional advantages and I survived the consumption although it was mostly during the first 20 years of my life…
However, I understood the downside to eating liver was the toxins…after all that’s the function of the liver. Am I to assume they are destroyed from cooking?
Will check into this.
And for Texas folks the best liver and onions is at Mimi’s
Also I recall my nursing training in the early 1970’s…this was probably pre prenatal’s and iron supplements that we were taught to instruct the preggo ladies to “remember to eat liver once a week” Like, right am sure they did that.
IF I remember, I shred liver while it is still frozen directly into any ground beef dish using a hand held cheese shredder. No one has figured it out yet, but I also don’t always remember to do it.
Heather, that’s similar to my new method. It’s working really well! 🙂
Deidre–My understanding is that while the liver does remove toxins from the body, it does not store them. And everything I’ve read stressed the importance of eating liver from a good source, ie. organic/grass-fed/no hormones or antibiotics. And by the way, we have Mimi’s here, too! 🙂
I am impressed that y’all ate it like steak. 🙂
Diane–I’m actually a big fan of bacon and bacon grease, provided it’s from a good source (pastured pigs raised without antibiotics and such). We eat it regularly, and with gusto. 🙂
Then you might like the liver this way. How do you shred it?
Thanks for this…we are in the process of buying our first 1/4 of a cow…not sure what all I will get, but all this info is very timely!! 🙂 You are such a wealth of knowledge KH! Love it!
How exciting! If you can talk directly to the butcher, I can give you some tips on what to ask for. This is our fourth time around, and we learn something every time. 🙂
In the Vitamix. 🙂 I think a food processor would work, too.