Raw Bison Liver

[capmikee]

I tried to get help with this on Kitchen Talk, but apparently it's too freaky for the folks over there. I just got some bison liver and I'd like to eat it raw -- does anyone have suggestions for recipes or condiments?

[Nancy LC]

It's pretty freaky for me too. :D

We do have a couple people here that eat raw meat but I don't think there's exactly a lot of them.

[jschwab]

It's pretty freaky for me too. :D

We do have a couple people here that eat raw meat but I don't think there's exactly a lot of them.

Talk about freaky, my kids eat raw meat all the time. I forgot to tell hubby about the steak tartare sandwich I saw someone eating at the festival I went to yesterday, so I'll do it here.

Are you going to eat it tonight?

[capmikee]

Talk about freaky, my kids eat raw meat all the time. I forgot to tell hubby about the steak tartare sandwich I saw someone eating at the festival I went to yesterday, so I'll do it here.
Really, at the German festival? They brought it with them, I suppose?
Are you going to eat it tonight?
No, I have a little chicken liver I'm going to finish first.

If nobody has any suggestions, here's what I'll try:

Slice off about half an ounce and just eat it straight. I can eat anything in small enough quantities.

Include in a carpaccio - raw meat always tastes great with my lemony garlic mayonnaise dressing, and pepper and parsley help too.

Eat with kimchi - I have a batch waiting in the basement and I'll bring it up when I finish my current sauerkraut.

I'll probably cook some of it too. I tried ghee on carpaccio one time and it didn't work at all, but it's great for sauteeing.

[jono]

I've eaten raw beef liver... sometimes half a pound at a time, just plain, eaten with a knife and fork.

The taste is strong and kinda nasty at first... but I got used to it after a while.

Adding some virgin coconut oil or red palm oil can help tone down the flavor.

[capmikee]

Do you have any trouble with the veins? Even when cooked, the veins kinda bother me.

What do you do with the coconut oil - do you melt it down first or spread it like butter?

[jono]

I eat it all, connective tissues and veins... there's never been a lot of veins though.

Here's how I add the coconut oil:

Fill a soup/cereal bowl with hot water.

Put some small coconut oil chunks in a small pudding bowl.

Put the pudding bowl in the first bowl. This is a hot water bath.

Then put some liver on a small plate, and put the plate on top of the pudding bowl.

The the oil melts and becomes liquid, and the liver warms up a bit, so upon pouring the oil over the liver it doesn't immediately re-solidify.

It's a little involved but simple enough.

[JKK]

I suggest freezing it, so that it's benumbed, and then just eating it. It might be good to include some fat with it, to help fat-soluble vitamins to be absorbed. Most people like liver best when it's very fresh (or fresh-frozen) and coming from a young animal.

Bon appetit or something.

[Graphite]

Well, first, you wiggle out of your straight jacket, and then you..... ;)


(Just teasin', tho... sounds cool! Might try that someday!)

[girlgerms]

Sorry, can't help. If I tried to eat raw bison liver the only dressing it would have would be vomit.

[Nancy LC]

Sorry, can't help. If I tried to eat raw bison liver the only dressing it would have would be vomit.
LOL! Oh thanks for the laugh. Good point. :lol:

[capmikee]

All right, liver-haters. Barf on this! :p

I finally tried my bison liver. I had a little taste of it raw last night, then I fried some briefly in ghee this morning with salt & pepper and an egg over easy. It is, hands down, the best mammal liver I've ever tasted. If you've ever thought you don't like liver, it is worth giving it a try just to be sure.

Here's the difference: Most liver has a very unpleasant "burn" to it. It's not like spicy food, more like bitter greens. My guess is that it's caused by toxins consumed by the animal, which are deposited in the liver. In all likelihood, this bison was one of the healthiest, least toxified animals I've eaten. The liver was extremely mild, with a slight bloody taste, which said "lots of minerals!" to me. Duck liver is very tasty and it's richer than bison liver, but the duck liver still had that "burn." This bison liver was just smooth...

A tip for squeamish tasters: I never liked liver before I went low-carb etc. Even afterwards, I'd make myself a big meal of liver and wouldn't be able to finish it. But after taking it more slowly, I've discovered that liver is one of those foods that tastes great until you've had enough, and then you can't stand it. If you think you don't like liver, try eating one spoonful and then stopping. It's easy if you keep it in the freezer and slice off a little bit at a time. And if you prefer it cooked, cook it by all means!

[Nancy LC]

Interesting! Thanks for the report. If I ever find bison liver I will try it... but cooked.

[Robibi]

All right, liver-haters. Barf on this! :p

... Most liver has a very unpleasant "burn" to it. It's not like spicy food, more like bitter greens. My guess is that it's caused by toxins consumed by the animal, which are deposited in the liver. In all likelihood, this bison was one of the healthiest, least toxified animals I've eaten....

I agree on the Bison. However, the liver's function in all mammals is not to store toxins at all, but rather to eliminate them from the bloodstream by "packaging them" so they might be better eliminated or stored in the adipose (fat) tissue.

Additionally, liver is one of the most prized foods throughout history for being a source of vitamins and minerals essential for healthy living as well as a food that entails peak performance (think warriors and hunters eating the livers out fo their prey).

If folks on this forum are squeamish about liver or other organ meats that's fairly understandable in our American culture...but at least it's not a live grub worm or bug wiggling and staring back at you in the eyes.

[Nancy LC]

If folks on this forum are squeamish about liver or other organ meats that's fairly understandable in our American culture...but at least it's not a live grub worm or bug wiggling and staring back at you in the eyes.
We've had people on this sub-forum try out the bug eating option. I've always been kind of fascinated by it, myself. So far only have eaten snails, escargot. It was good!

Thanks for pointing that out about liver being more of a filtration system than a toxic dump site. I hadn't really thought about that.

[frankly]

...
Thanks for pointing that out about liver being more of a filtration system than a toxic dump site. I hadn't really thought about that.

I keep wondering about it myself, since many times when we discuss eating liver on these forums someone weighs in with the seemingly inevitable... "it's full of toxins" and advises us to eat liver from young, organic animals. I just started poking around on the matter and like this Weston A. Price page (http://www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/liver.html)about eating liver. Anyway, it also has this to say which is similar:
"...One of the roles of the liver is to neutralize toxins (such as drugs, chemical agents and poisons); but the liver does not store toxins. Poisonous compounds that the body cannot neutralize and eliminate are likely to lodge in the fatty tissues and the nervous system. The liver is not a storage organ for toxins but it is a storage organ for many important nutrients (vitamins A, D, E, K, B12 and folic acid, and minerals such as copper and iron). These nutrients provide the body with some of the tools it needs to get rid of toxins."

[Robibi]

You can read some interesting information about liver here at the Weston A. Price Foundation.

http://www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/liver.html

Here's a few noteworthy excerpts:


The Liver Files
Recipes and Lore About Our Most Important Sacred Food

By Lynn Razaitis
Since history began, "liver has ranked above all other offal as one of the most prized culinary delights. Its heritage is illustrious--whether savored by young warriors after a kill or mixed with truffles and cognac for fine patés de foie gras." So write Margaret Gin and Jana Allen, authors of Innards and Other Variety Meats (San Francisco, 1974).

Practically every cuisine has liver specialties. Some cultures place such a high value on liver that human hands can’t touch it. Special sticks must move it. The Li-Chi, a handbook of rituals published during China’s Han era (202B.C. to 220A.D.), lists liver as one of the Eight Delicacies. Throughout most of recorded time humans have preferred liver over steak by a large margin, regarding it as a source of great strength and as providing almost magical curative powers.

A LONG LIST
So what makes liver so wonderful? Quite simply, it contains more nutrients, gram for gram, than any other food. In summary, liver provides:

An excellent source of high-quality protein
Nature’s most concentrated source of vitamin A
All the B vitamins in abundance, particularly vitamin B12
One of our best sources of folic acid
A highly usable form of iron
Trace elements such as copper, zinc and chromium; liver is our best source of copper
An unidentified anti-fatigue factor
CoQ10, a nutrient that is especially important for cardio-vascular function
A good source of purines, nitrogen-containing compounds that serve as precursors for DNA and RNA.

...and further down in the article you have these fun facts:

Eating Raw Liver. . .
Good Heavens!
Eating raw liver is definitely not a Standard American Dietary (SAD) practice! So why in the world would a sane person even consider eating their liver raw? Most of the reasons are anecdotal with the primary one being that people who do consistently report how good it makes them feel.

Southern hunters have a tradition of eating the liver of their freshly killed deer as a "manly" thing to do.
In Argentina, cowboys eat liver (and meat) raw or very lightly cooked.
People who grew up on farms tell of eating the liver freshly warm from the animal and only lightly cooking it (and all the organs and glands)
Weston Price reported on the consumption of raw liver among African hunter-gatherer tribes. Liver was considered so sacred that they never touched it with their hands, only with their spears. They ate it both raw and cooked.
The physician Max Gerson used raw liver juice, extracted with a special juicer that pressed out the liquid, in his original healing protocol with pancreatic cancer patients. His daughter, Charlotte Gerson, later dropped this part of the protocol because of the unavailability of fresh clean liver without bacterial contamination. Now a crude liver extract injection or desiccated liver tablets are used in the current protocol. However, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, a New York doctor who treats cancer holistically, insists that all his patients eat raw liver.


I sometimes harvest my own Bison at a friend's ranch down here in Texas...they're Bison that are cared for, free range and organic (he has a small herd of about 300; of course I eat all the animal and he'll turn the hide into a rug, carry-on luggage or whatever you like).

I harvest Bison because I was trying to eat one of the best sources of nutrition on the planet but was afraid of Mad Cow disease. So, I can tell you this: the one superfood better than raw liver is by far is raw bone marrow. Oh, my GOD! That stuff will cure cancer. AMAZING. But you better be careful of your source animal these days, and really no matter what part of it you're eating.

However, as far as raw organ meats go, my favorite for taste and pure deliciousness by far is raw duck liver. Unfortunately it is the overly fat liver from ducks that have been forced to eat as much as an anverage American that tastes so great--and oh have these livers become so hard to find nowadays (but, if you've got French people around they should be able to tell you where you can get some). If not, there is always mail order from Hudson Valley as an option--not cheap though, no matter where you find them (~$80/lb), but I'd say it's worth it and just think of it as the best vitamin you could buy. The above article also offers more details about other animal livers.

Hope you find this helpful.

[capmikee]

An unidentified anti-fatigue factor
I can attest to that! After a week of snacking on my bison liver, both raw and cooked (with fried eggs), my energy improved noticeably.

So if toxins are instead stored in fat and nerve tissue, it's brains you need to be careful with. Don't eat brains from factory farmed animals! Go get yourself some grassfed bison brains!

That goes a long way toward explaining the BSE problem.

I have eaten escargot, but I had to force myself. It tasted fine, but I still have a problem with the idea. It's a shame, because we get lots of maggots around here. I hear they're quite edible, but I won't be trying them soon...