Recipes for cooking liver with photos

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

In Russian cuisine, the liver is not honored. It is interpreted as "insides", meat of the lowest grade, like the stomach, heart, kidneys, brains. But in the national cuisines of other countries, liver (aka liver) is a delicacy. What is not prepared from it! Patés, pancakes, mousses, meatballs and even a cake. Did you know that the famous French delicacy foie gras is nothing more than goose liver cooked in a special way? In addition to the fact that the liver is very tasty, it is also extremely useful. But many cooks who do not know the secret of cooking the liver are disappointed in this product. The liver of an inexperienced cook can turn out to be dry, sinewy, hard, like the sole of a sneaker, and even incredibly bitter. All these unpleasant qualities the liver acquires as a result of its improper processing. But if you approach the matter wisely, the liver will surprise you with its delicate taste and unforgettable characteristic aroma. In this article, we have compiled a selection of cooking recipesliver. We hope that with its help you will enrich your menu and delight your loved ones with delicious liver dishes.

The benefits and harms of the liver

Since ancient times, people considered this product a panacea for anemia. And this is not surprising, because any liver has a lot of iron, which gives the liver a slightly metallic taste. And this mineral is necessary for the biosynthesis of hemoglobin and the production of blood cells. Beef liver and spinach are still the best remedy for anemia. Liver also contains a large amount of amino acids, including valuable arachidonic, docosahexaenoic and eicosapentaenoic. If you have weakened hair, brittle nails and an unhe althy skin color, you just need to learn the secrets of cooking the liver, because this product contains the entire line of vitamins you are missing. Liver is also useful for people with shattered nerves. Vitamin B12 calms, helps to cope with causeless anxiety and insomnia. Of the useful minerals, in addition to iron, the liver is rich in copper, which is responsible for the normal functioning of cells. Leaver is worth leaning on for those people who want to have sharp eyesight. After all, the product also contains retinol (vitamin A). The same substance strengthens the immune system. But who needs to use the liver with caution is people suffering from cardiovascular diseases. Liver contains cholesterol, which provokes the appearance of atherosclerotic plaques.

How to choose a liver

Try to buy chilled rather than frozen food. Let's look at color first. At the beef liverit is like a ripe cherry, the pork has a reddish-brown tint. The liver of a bird is lighter. Chicken liver is light brown, and turkey liver is more red. The most delicious is veal liver. Its color varies from dark beige to red.

Sometimes the preparation of the liver is simply doomed to failure, because the gallbladder of the animal was torn during the skinning of the carcass, and the liver became bitter. A good product has neither blood clots nor dark spots on the surface. Press lightly on the liver. It should be soft, but elastic, moist shiny. Now let's sniff. A good liver has a metallic smell. A sour spirit indicates spoilage of the product. If you do have to buy frozen livers, make sure they don't have yellow or orange spots. They indicate that the product was thawed and stored incorrectly. It is desirable that the liver rest in its own "packaging", that is, in a natural film, without damage and scratches.

Product processing

Whatever animal liver you buy, and whatever recipe you choose, you need to start the culinary process with preliminary preparation of the liver. Photos will make our instructions more understandable. First of all, you need to remove the liver from its film. It's a rather complicated procedure. Rather, it will be easy to do with beef liver. Its film is strong and resembles a nylon stocking. To make it easier to pull off the liver, put the whole piece in the freezer for half an hour. And cooks, on the contrary, recommend holding pork liver for 20 seconds in boiling water. Bird liver can be held for 10 minutes inwarm water. After that, you need to pick up the edge of the thin film with the tip of the knife and pull it towards you, smoothly but surely, without making sudden movements. After cleaning the liver, you need to cut out all the vessels and bile ducts. In order for the liver to lose its characteristic bitterness, cooks use the following tricks:

• Soaking in milk for about two hours. Whey, buttermilk, kefir will also work.
• Marinated in lemon juice.
• Sprinkling with baking soda. After this procedure, the liver must be thoroughly rinsed.

But veal and bird liver do not need such preliminary manipulations. Especially if you decide to cook them in sour cream.

Easiest recipe

The similarity of liver with seafood is that the longer you fry it, the firmer it becomes. Consider the most elementary recipe for cooking liver in a pan. Wash four hundred grams of liver, dry with napkins, cut into small pieces. We chop two onions into rings, and rub the carrots coarsely. In a frying pan, heat up a mixture of vegetable and butter. Roll the liver pieces in flour. Fry them for no more than a minute on each side. Note: do not s alt! Add onions and carrots. As soon as the vegetables are slightly sauteed, pour half a glass of sour cream into the pan. At this stage, you can already s alt the dish and season it with spices. We continue to fry for 5-7 minutes. Then turn off the fire, and insist under the lid for the same amount of time. Sprinkle with chopped fresh herbs before serving. This dish can be made from any liver. Butbeef liver should be soaked in milk for at least an hour before frying.

Having mastered the simplest recipe, you can complicate cooking the liver in a pan by adding other products. Very tasty liver in sour cream with mushrooms. Fry 4-5 pieces of bacon in vegetable oil. We take out the greaves, and put the liver in their place. Then add the onion to it. When they are fried, pour the contents of a jar of pickled mushrooms into the pan along with the liquid (about 300 ml). Pour a quarter cup of sour cream and two soup spoons of meat broth. Reduce heat and simmer covered for about 20 minutes. Dilute a couple of tablespoons of flour in a small amount of sour cream. Pour the sauce into the pan. We return the cracklings there as well.

Liver cake

No Ukrainian wedding is complete without this appetizer. And making a cake is very simple - if you have an effective blender at your disposal. For the dish, chicken liver is most like. Cake recipes are very different from each other. Here we present the classic version. Grind half a kilo of chicken liver in a blender. If you do not have such a device, just pass the liver twice through a meat grinder. Add 300 milliliters of milk, half a glass of flour, two eggs, s alt and black pepper to the minced meat. Let's mix. The dough should turn out like sour cream. Sprinkle flour if necessary. Pour 2-3 tablespoons of vegetable oil into the dough. We bake pancakes in a pan. These are the cake layers. Now let's get to the cream. Grind in a blender three onions and four carrots. Put in a frying pan with the addition of oil and simmer. Mix a package (250 g) of mayonnaise with two or three finely chopped garlic cloves in a bowl. We begin to fold the cake. Spread each pancake with mayonnaise. Spread the fried vegetables on top. Spread the top cake only with mayonnaise. Decorate with a grated hard-boiled egg and fresh herbs. We send the cake to soak in the refrigerator.

Liver pate

Why buy a dubious store-bought product when you can make delicious liver mousse yourself? And from one piece of meat you get quite a lot of pate. For the dish, you can take any liver, except beef. But the most delicious pate will come out of veal liver. We do not consider recipes for making foie gras here, since the goose is specially fed fatty foods all three weeks before slaughter. Yes, and cooking a French delicacy at home is quite difficult. Pâté recipes, however varied, can be grouped into two categories. In the first, the liver is fried and stewed. And then the pieces are ground to the consistency of pate. In the second group, the liver is first crushed to a paste-like state, and then, adding various ingredients, baked in the oven.

Let's consider the first option of cooking the liver according to the French recipe. Half a kilo of processed veal liver cut into large pieces. We chop the onion, finely chop the garlic clove. In a saucepan, we pass the vegetables in a mixture of butter and vegetable oils. Lay out the liver. Fry so that the pieces insideremained raw. Pour half a glass of white wine. S alt, add pepper, coriander, nutmeg. After five minutes, pour half a glass of heavy cream. As soon as the mass boils, turn off the fire. Puree the cooled liver in a blender. We put the masses into molds. Pour in melted butter. Cool, cover with cling film and put in the refrigerator.

Mousse in the oven

Cooking turkey or chicken liver saves the cook time and energy. The film of this offal is quite thin, it is not necessary to remove it. We cut 250 grams of liver into pieces and puree in a blender. Pour 30 milliliters of milk and a tablespoon of cognac into this gruel. We drive in the egg, add spices (pepper, Provencal herbs, nutmeg, coriander) and s alt. Squeeze a clove of garlic through a press. We carefully knead the mass. Add 30 grams of melted butter. Knead again and spread the mass on the baking tins. We set them in a baking sheet with high sides. Pour boiling water into it so that the water level reaches half the height of the molds. We put in the oven and bake at 160 degrees for half an hour (veal liver). Cooking chicken liver requires less time - 15-20 minutes. A little longer (20-25 minutes) the turkey liver is baked. When the pate has cooled and its swollen top has fallen off, pour melted butter into the molds to create a layer protected from winding. Put in the fridge.

Pork liver:cooking recipes

This type of liver is the cheapest. If you grease the liver with a cut lemon, the film will separate easily. So that the offal does not taste bitter and remains soft after cooking, be sure to soak it for half an hour in milk, cut into pieces. We throw the liver into a colander. In a frying pan, heat up a mixture of oils, pass finely chopped onions. One head is required per 400 gram piece of liver. When the onion becomes as if transparent, lay out the pieces of liver. Cooking pork liver does not take much time. Fry for an average of ten minutes, stirring occasionally. In a glass of sour cream, stir in a teaspoon of ready-made mustard and flour. We send this sauce to the pan. Stir and simmer covered for ten minutes. Only then s alt the liver to taste, season with spices. Squeeze out the second clove of garlic, dry aromatic herbs (cilantro, parsley) through the press. Boiled potatoes, rice, buckwheat porridge, pasta will suit this delicious dish as a side dish.

Chops

Preparing beef liver, which is harder than other offal, requires some physical effort from the cook. But the result will not disappoint you. Beef liver chops are very juicy and literally melt in your mouth. First, let's pre-process the liver. Let's remove the film, get rid of the bile ducts. It will even be good if you buy a frozen liver. Then cutting it into flat slices 1-1.5 centimeters thick will not be difficult. If we make chops, then soaking the liver in milk is not necessary. Just spread the pieces between two cling films (or wrap incellophane bag) and beat off with a wooden mallet. We work half-heartedly, without fanaticism. Liver, unlike meat, has a delicate structure, and can tear to holes. Pour flour into one bowl, drive two eggs into the second and shake them with a fork. S alt the prepared chops, pepper on both sides. We put a frying pan on the fire. Pour vegetable oil. When it warms up, take a chop, roll it first in flour, then dip it in eggs. Fry on both sides until done. The recipe recommends serving this dish with mashed potatoes or stewed cabbage.

Cooking chicken liver. Braised liver with onions

Quick, cheap, tasty, he althy - that's what can be said about poultry liver dishes. Here we will give some basic recipes that you can complicate by adding other ingredients (mushrooms, vegetables, etc.). For a pound of chicken liver, you need two onions. Wash the liver, dry it, cut each into quarters. We chop the bulbs in half rings. Heat up vegetable oil in a frying pan. We fry the onion. We do not pass it to a transparent color, but bring it to a rosy color. Adding liver. Fry over medium heat for about seven minutes. As soon as a crust forms, s alt and pepper the dish. We reduce the fire. Simmer covered for five minutes. If necessary, add a little boiling water.

Salads

Especially tender snacks are made from poultry liver. Here is a recipe for one of the many salads. Cooking potato tuber and carrots, as for Olivier, in uniforms. Separately boil300 grams of chicken liver. Cool down. We cut these ingredients into small pieces along with pickled cucumber and onion. Mix mayonnaise with a teaspoon of mustard. We fill the dish with this sauce, not forgetting to s alt it. And on the festive table you can serve a puff salad with chicken liver. Instead of potatoes and carrots, we introduce a hard-boiled egg into the list of ingredients. The onions according to this recipe must first be fried in butter with s alt and pepper. Lettuce layers are laid in the following order: liver, onion, fat in which it was fried, cucumber, mayonnaise. You can divide all the ingredients in half, and lay out more layers - so the salad will turn out even tastier. Top the dish with grated egg and chopped fresh dill.