Why eat liver?
When transitioning to a traditional diet, some changes come easier than others. Switching from using refined sugar to using raw honey/pure maple syrup as a sweetener? Pshaw, no problem. Making bone broth? Couldn’t be easier. Eating more butter and coconut oil? Yep, no problem there!
But liver. Real foodies love their liver, but the gosh-darn stuff is certainly an acquired taste.
I’ve given it the old college try, but I just cannot eat liver plain. I’m okay with it in homemade pate. I make my pate with copious amounts of butter and caramelized onions, and that does a good job of disguising the “minerally” taste. Often, I’ll grind up a pastured chicken liver and mix it into ground beef to make meatballs. Again, I add lots of heavy seasonings like garlic to mask the liver taste.
But my absolute favorite way to get a healing dose of liver? Homemade liver pills!
The Easiest Way To Eat Liver!
I swallow a couple of these “pills” with every meal for a no-fuss, no-taste way to get the benefits of liver. Even better, the liver is raw so all the enzymes and nutrients are most potent. Eating cooked liver still provides your body with nutrients, but some delicate vitamins, like certain B vitamins, are decreased by cooking.
Of course, since the liver is raw, make sure you have a fresh source of liver. I buy pastured chicken livers from a local farmer who freezes the liver immediately after butchering his chickens.
Don’t want to make it? Buy Desiccated Liver Capsules
If you don’t have a good source of liver or if you don’t want to make your own liver pills, you can buy desiccated liver capsules here.
Homemade "Liver Pills"
Ingredients
- Grassfed/pastured liver, thawed if frozen. Use only the highest quality liver.
Instructions
- Rinse the liver and pat dry. With a sharp knife, carefully cut the liver into pill-sized chunks. Place the pieces, separated, on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Freeze until solid.
- Transfer the frozen "liver pills" into an airtight container and store in the freezer. Freeze for 14 days before eating to kill any pathogens in the liver. Swallow a couple of frozen "liver pills" with every meal.
Do you eat liver on a regular basis? What is your favorite way to eat liver?
Do you store the pills in the fridge or the freezer? I can see swallowing tiny frozen pieces of liver, but tiny defrosted pieces of liver doesn’t sound as appealing.
Yes–store them in the freezer. Sorry for the typo, I’ve fixed it!
I make a casserole with ground beef, finely chopped beef liver, and shredded potatoes. It is delicious and my “liver, BLECH” husband loves it.
That sounds like a great way to disguise liver–what a creative recipe!
If you don’t use grass-fed liver (my only source locally is calves liver from a grocery store – NOT grass fed), is it ok to eat this raw? I assume that the process of freezing it will kill any “bad germs” in it?
I guess it depends on what you are comfortable with… personally, I would never eat “grocery store liver,” and I certainly wouldn’t eat it raw. I don’t know how much of the germs are killed by freezing it.
My two cents:
Think of how the human liver works, it filters everything. It is constantly at work. It’s not just alcohol but the healthy foods we eat as well that the liver has to process and make sense of. A human liver is probably the most toxic of things, an organic pasture raised cow/chicken on the other hand is pretty pure. I wouldn’t liver myself unless I could find it fresh and well raised by a local farmer, otherwise, there are just too many nasty things you’d be consuming even though your intent was to eat it for healthy benefits, I don’t believe you’d be doing yourself much good. YOUR liver would have to process all the nastys in the chemical/gmo/bad diet/bad life liver. Same thing goes for dairys. All these chemicals and unhealthies concentrate in the fat, so always buy milk, butter, cheese etc from happy cows.
& happy cows don’t eat corn and soy.
The liver doesn’t store the toxins. It puts them in fat to store. The liver is the treasure box of the body. The most beautiful nourishing things are there. That said I don’t think I would eat raw liver from the store. I’d cook it if that’s your only source. But store liver is better than none. Look for calf liver.
Yep, very true! I agree with everything you said.
I love it! I eat it for breakfast most mornings. I prefer calf’s liver. I put salt and pepper all over it and fry it medium rare. Then I eat it. I wouldn’t eat liver as a kid.
I forgot to say, I feed raw chicken livers mixed with raw chicken hearts to my cat. Since doings so I have immediately seen increased energy in him and his fur is so soft.
Interesting! I’m sure it is a delicious treat for him, too.
Thank you for this, it’s so timely! I’ve been on a similar path, trying to find a way to sneak liver into my diet without tasting it. I just got some wonderful jojoba-fed beef liver from my meat man, and was about to dessicate it to put into capsules. Your idea is so much less labor intensive, and saves my insides from having to break down a capsule in order to get to the good stuff!
I do have one tip that could be helpful: If you’re starting with frozen liver, don’t let it thaw all the way. Letting it soften just enough that you can comfortably get your sharp knife though it will make a potentially frustrating job exponentially easier. Liver is notoriously slimy and hard to work with. Leaving a little bite from the freezer will not only make it easier and safer (ever let your knife slip on a hunk of organ meat?), it will allow you to make much more uniform cuts.
Thanks again!
Great tip about cutting the liver! I will totally do that next time, since the liver is very slippery to cut.
Here’s another one: You once posted about how you cook a chicken on Sundays, sneak the organs into whatever meals you can, and drink the bone broth throughout the week.
WELL! Instead of sneaking the organs in wherever, try this. Cook them fast, chop in a food processor, and puree with around 1/4 to 1/3 cup chicken or other poultry stock (I just did this with duck for dinner tonight). You’ll get a beautiful silky sauce to pour over the meat and it doesn’t have that distinctive mineral-ly taste. Season with a little sea salt and maybe some sauted garlic and you’ve got a sauce to be proud of.
In other news, I found out today that the ground beef hearts and kidneys that I’ve been buying from my local butcher are referred to, behind the counter, as pet food. ROFL i’ve been adding it to ground beef and turning that into sausage for the humans of the house for the past year. [SNICKER]
I’m so going to try your sauce suggestion! Thank you for sharing it!
This is how I eat mine most often too. Just a tip, make sure you cut them pretty small. It’s easier to take a few more on the small side then try and swallow a larger chunk of frozen liver.
Would you get the benefits without chewing it enough to break it down?
Yep!
It’s remarkable in support of me to have a web site, which is helpful designed for my know-how. thanks admin
How much liver do you recommend weekly? I was just given some nice lamb (grass finished) liver
Do you swallow the chunks whole, or chew them?
swallow whole
Awesome! I add liver puree to my ground beef. Eating it raw and getting even more nutrition is an awesome idea!
When I make ground meat dishes, I add ground liver/kidney mix at a 1:1 ratio. Can’t taste the “organ meat” flavor at all.
This past weekend, we made a gigantic batch of paleo chili (no beans) with ground bision, bison stew meat, and ground hearts/kidneys. It was AMAZING and everybody my husband works with wants to know the recipe.
HI!
I am wondering, we get our liver already frozen, Do I need to thaw it in the fridge, cut it up, and re-freeze it? or should i just cut it up while it’s frozen, and avoid thawing it, and re-freezing. I’m finding conflicting stories, and I know that generally when you thaw meat, you can’t re-freeze it. Just wondering what you do!
-Skylar
I also get mine frozen, so I thaw and re-freeze it. Re-freezing meat often affects the texture, but here–since we’re swallowing it whole–the texture doesn’t matter.
what brand of liver do you recommend? where can i purchase online ?
My husband suffers from gout when e eats organ meats & rich foods. Will this affect him? He s obviously claiming it will, of course!
Purines in liver can cause gout or kidney stones in those prone to them anyway
Read more at http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2011/02/07/monday-mission-try-organ-meats/#jfcIXuhUwUHIElKd.99
I, like many heart patients, have been advised not to eat organ meats because of their high cholesterol content. I really hated giving up liver cooked like steak, and smothered in sauteed onions.
Hi!! I love your blog and your recipes. Thank you for talking about liver which is sooo important for nutrition. I am a “liver specialist” myself, meaning I specialize in making it taste good! If you want to see some liver recipes please go to my (just started) blog
thenourishedcaveman.com
Vivica
I’ve been reading about placenta encapsulation and I was wondering if liver could be prepared the same way. Basically, you would cut it into strips, dehydrate it, crush it into a powder, then put the powder into capsules. It would basically be like a vitamin and I would think it would “keep” longer if it’s been dehydrated. Since dehydrators work with such low heat, it should keep most of the nutrients, right?
Is it ok to defrost and and then refreeze the liver?
Yep, that is what I do because I buy it frozen.