Having read that liver is one of the best organ meats you can buy - in nutritional terms - I decided to try cooking beef liver. This was with great trepidation, because I remember my mum (I'm from England and my mother did her very best to live up to England's awful culinary reputation - may she rest in peace...) used to cook liver for us when me and my sister were kids. And it was awful. So dry you could barely swallow it. The only saving grace was that she served it with bacon and onions. If you took a mouthful of the dry liver with the bacon and onions, you could just about eat it without gagging. She also belonged to the "If you don't eat your dinner, you won't get any pudding!" fraction, so we diligently forced this down our throats. (The woman couldn't cook, but she could bake - her fruit pies were delicious!!!)

So, armed with "Nourishing Traditions", I decided to try cooking liver (just for myself first, nobody else was here for lunch today). And it was scrummy!

The trick was to marinate it in lemon juice for a long time.

Sally Fallon's recipe recommends "several hours", but for various reasons, (one was fear of eating liver) I didn't have the liver I had put in the fridge with lemon juice yesterday morning for lunch yesterday, so by today it had been marinated for about 24 hours! It looked kind of weird and it is weird to handle, but I did what Sally said (more or less) - dredged it in a bit of flour and popped it in a hot pan and cooked it on both sides for a couple of minutes each. At the same time I had four rashers of bacon and an onion chopped into half rings in another frying pan - cooked in clarified butter.

She recommended cooking the liver and then putting it in a warm oven and then sautéing the onions for half an hour!!! This all seemed a bit wasteful in terms of energy and time (I'm not putting the oven on just to keep a bit of liver warm for one person!!!) and I didn't quite understand why you had to sauté the onions for so long. I like my onions well-browned (if not a bit blackish, actually) and I can do them in much less time than half an hour - more like ten minutes.

Anyway, between us, me and Sally made a fine lunch! I didn't have any other veggies with it as it was quite a big portion for little me! I had this at about 2.30pm and it kept me full for absolutely hours. Usually I would eat something with my kids about 7pm, but today I was not hungry!

I am so proud of myself that I had to share it with the forum! (Nobody round here would appreciate the dimensions of this achievement, I'm afraid...)

amanda

That's always the spoiler when other people try to make liver for me, ditto fish. As for being liver being dry, I find this is usually a result of over-cooking... I prefer my liver rare, but even cooking it to just shy of medium - will usually keep it nice and moist. Anyway, glad to hear you enjoyed your liver - I'd never heard of marinating it in lemon, I recall some people use milk for the same desired result... but I've never tried it myself.

I love baby beef liver with onions...I usually soak the liver in cream/milk first and I like it cooked "well-done" but not dry.To speed up the process I might cut the liver up into small bite-sized pieces.

I've never heard of lemon juice on liver....sounds like it would give a nice tang...I should try it!

As for the onions...they have to be almost black...

calves liver was a staple on my menu many years ago, when it was cheap.
i used to saute it in butter, squeeze lemon all over it, and you would have thought you were eating veal.......

it was awesome.

I love liver - I cook mostly lambs liver, but occasionally pigs or ox liver. I flash fry it very quickly in a hot pan so it does not get dry and hard. I also cook chicken livers and whizz them into pate with some bacon, onions, lots of butter or lard, and a splash of brandy. Duck liver is awesome, but I can't get hold of it very often. Calves liver is fab but extortionate in price around here.

How does the flavour of beef liver compare to that of chicken livers? I tried the latter a few months ago and... yech. At least the dog liked it.

I've never found a recipe that masked the bloody taste of beef liver, yech. I continue to force it down because of how good for you it is. Lemon juice and not overcooking, hmm. Sounds promising!

Two comments: marinating the liver in lemon juice doesn't really give it a noticeable lemony taste, actually, but it just made the liver quite moist and well, edible (compared to the liver my mum used to make...)

I absolutely agree on the onions: the darker they get, the better they are!

Happy cooking!
amanda

Ill have to try that. Me and dog eat our share of liver. I use lemon or tomato to tenderize meats before cooking and they work well. Lately I have been experimenting with baking sweetbreads (beef pancreas).

Liver is still popular in Australia, Woolworths (our equivalent of Safeway and not to be confused with the old FW Woolworth) have a section of 'offal' with various types of heart, tripe, livers, brains, beef cheeks and oxtail.

My favourite is lambs liver which I fry with bacon & onions and some red wine and olive oil to make a gravy.

Pubs still serve it as a lunchtime item.

I love liver. I will try this. I've never heard of marinating it in lemon juice, sounds interesting. I've used lime juice to marinate raw fish for ceviche. I'm not sure what the function is of the flour coating? To give it a nice crisp texture on the outside, or to prevent it from sticking to the pan? I've tried using Carbquik as breading, and I didn't like it. So I'll try it without any coating, since you've been successful with that method (according to your more recent post).

You don't need the flour at all.

Chicken liver is about neutral for me, whereas I love duck liver and I can just barely force down beef liver. But maybe you'll like beef liver better, who knows.

Maybe I should try marinating in coconut milk yogurt...

coconut milk yogurt?! WTF? I've never seen that in stores. Do you make it at home?

You betcha. It's a bit of a pain to get started (I don't use a commercial yogurt culture because I want it to be 100% dairy free) but it's easy as pie to keep it going. Every time I finish a jar, I refill it with coconut milk and leave it on top of the dishwasher for 24 hours.

I marinated some liver in lime juice tonight. I had a bad headache today and felt like I needed a pick-me-up. I fried it in lard and ate it right away, no onions or flour or anything. I didn't mind the taste this time; hope it helps me recover from whatever it is I've got.

I like my baby beef or calves liver cut into bite-size pieces along with bacon and onion chopped. Stir-fry the onions and bacon until they're about half cooked, then add the liver pieces and keep stir-frying until the liver is cooked but still slightly pink. I like a splash of Worcestershire Sauce added at the end. I've tried dredging it with flour but I can't see that it adds anything but starch ... who needs it?!!!