I am genuinely always in awe of livers. First of all, what an immaculate name - liver. And it really makes sense because a liver regenerates so, technically speaking, it’s a liver, one who lives on. Or maybe I am being a tad bit too poetic on this beautiful Saturday.
Secondly, the texture. I am a sucker for a good texture in food, as I am sure most of us are. With brains, it was mushy and soft and really lets you paint a picture. With a liver, you have to be a bit more careful - it does have a strong taste and most people end up trying to get away from that taste by dipping it in milk, a practice I have seen with regard to brains, too. However, some people, myself included, love that taste that’s so inherently liver. Liver contains a healthy amount of blood (a human liver contains 13% of the body’s blood), which means if you practice Kosher, you need to cook the liver by grilling/broiling to remove all the blood from it and then proceed however you need to!
The healthy amount of blood, which really differs from animal to animal, is what gives it that characteristic iron taste. It is a rich source of vitamin A, iron, copper, and the B vitamins. While it is nutrient rich, you should still not consume it every day as it can lead to toxicity. But then again, consuming too much of anything is ideally not that great for the body. For instance, over consumption of water leads to a decrease in the body’s salt levels and results in the swelling of cells. Which…not a great thing. In moderation, however, liver is a great source of vitamin A, the B vitamins, iron and copper.
Fun fact: If you are ever in a situation where you are about to eat a moose, dog or polar bear liver, well, don’t. They have insanely high levels of vitamin A and will definitely lead to an equally insane amount of vitamin A toxicity in your body. But like, if you are a person who did manage to look at a moose or survived a polar bear enough to eat their liver, please hit me up! Would love to talk about your guts! (definitely not an intended pun)
Offally available organ
And yes, it’s one of few offal you will easily find near you. Not that I condone buying meat from the supermarket but if that’s your easiest option, then yes, you will easily find liver! Depending on what meat your country, region or locality eats the most, you are likely to find chicken, beef or sheep liver pretty easily!
An underrated Indian dish, at least for me, is Keema Kaleji, which is whole chicken livers (kaleji) cooked with minced meat (keema) and a myriad of spices. However, across the globe we have Drob po Selski (Bulgaria), Frygadeli (Greece), Fegato alla Veneziana (Italy), Foie gras (France), Livermush (US; but my Norwegian friends say otherwise) and more.
However, today I want to focus on Higado Encebollado, contributed by my Venezuelan friend Diego when I pestered him to contribute a recipe for my thesis. I mean, what are friends for if you cannot, literally, annoy them into supporting your whims and fancies?
Higado encebollado is a recipe that’s pretty staple across Central and South America but also very famously known as Liver and Onions. Interesting to find out that if you type Liver and Onions in your Google search bar, you will find a different kind of recipes and their origins than you would if you type out Higado Encebollado. Higado means “liver”, and encebollado means “cooked with onions”, which, as you can see, translates to Liver cooked with Onions. While offal in general declined in popularity, liver and onions remained, having already established a stable existence in cuisines and cultural practices.
As stated above, if you want to not get that distinct taste of blood in your mouth, consider soaking the livers in milk. Unlike the brain, you don’t technically have to keep changing the water but you do have to be gentle about handling the organ. While muscle meat is sturdy enough, livers are delicate. When you purchase the liver, or any kind of meat, make it a habit to rinse it in room temperature water. Specifically with livers, there is a thin membrane surrounding it that needs to be removed. You could do this in a bowl of water to make sure it’s easier to remove the membrane. Post which, most people either soak it in milk or in a bowl of water, salt and lemon. However you may want to, consider submerging the liver in some liquid while you prep the rest of your mise en place. Also because if you are in a warmer climate, the possibility of flies coming in and making that liver/meat their home becomes much lesser.
Fun fact: Soaking the liver in milk is usually done when the liver that is being consumed comes from an older animal and to remove a slight bitter aftertaste.
Now, once your cebollas or onions are sliced, garlic chopped, all your other ingredients and ready, you can go ahead and cut your liver into thin strips or bigger chunks, however you prefer.
This is how I cook it: I first cook the liver strips (also a helpful step if you practice Kosher) and try to brown it slightly before adding the onions and the garlic. And then I follow the rest of the steps as indicated. The onions will release water, which will greatly help rehydrating the liver and I also use broth, which will definitely seep some amount of moisture into it.
This is how you can alternatively do it: Cook the onions and garlic first, then add the liver and then follow suit. This gives the onions a bit of a chance to lightly caramelise before it starts mixing with the liver and the wine and the broth.
Or, you can cook the liver first, take it off the pan, then cook the onions and the garlic and the rest and then add the liver towards the end. Really, endless ways of going about this.
Here’s a useful tip:
I pre-make a roux and keep it for future use as a thickener. It will survive well when stored in the fridge. The traditional method is to cook equal parts flour with equal parts unsalted butter but there are variations where you can use lard and meat shavings - like small pieces of fat you removed from a chunk of meat, you had homemade bacon and had a weird tiny piece left that you possibly couldn’t slice up enough, you get it. But really, it’s nothing a sharp nose and a bit of whisking can’t fix.
For basic sauces, I use a blond roux, which is basically cooking the flour in the butter until the raw flour smell is gone and develops a bit of browning, and the milk solids toast a bit. But if you want a time frame then it comes together in about 5-10 minutes, and it turns into a light caramel/peanut butter colour. Besides, it will last you 6 months in the fridge, and up to a year in the freezer!
For anyone who wants to go the gluten-free route, opt out the flour with sweet rice starch and proceed with the quantity and process as you would with a traditional roux! And if you are vegan, you can opt out the butter for any neutral oil with a high smoking point (also helps if you are making a darker roux) or just vegan butter will do, for white and blond roux. However, if you want a vegan, gluten-free roux, the aforementioned oils mixed with a grain-based gluten-free flour mix. If you don’t use grain-based, it will not thicken.
This is, by no means, the traditional recipe. Just a way you can eat great higado encebollado at home. I paired it with an oregano and garlic rice and I was in heaven for a very specific period of time.
Higado Encebollado:
What you will need:
Liver; beef, pork, lamb or chicken, up to you - 1/2 kg
Onion; I used a mix of white and shallots because I had them - 1/2 of a white onion and 1 full shallot or 1 entire onion, medium sized. You can also use purple and yellow onions.
Garlic - let your ancestors speak to you and guide you on how much garlic you’d ideally like to put in. But, I added like 4 big cloves, chopped or minced.
Roux - 1tsp. Alternatively, a cornstarch slurry will do!
Red wine - 1/2 cup; if you want to spice up the recipe, you can also use other alcohols and then it would be a great pun about how this alcohol technically made the liver taste so much better (but in case you are using other alcohol, keep it within 90ml as exceeding that might overpower the liver taste)
Broth/Stock - 1/2 cup, if it’s a homemade/ store bought liquid broth; 1/2 cube if it’s one of those; 1tsp dissolved in 1.5cup of water, if it’s powdered; if it’s a paste, like the ones you get in Switzerland, then 1/2tsp.
Salt and pepper - to taste
Oil, butter, lard - if it’s oil, 2.5 tbsp; if it’s butter, 1tbsp mixed with 1tbsp of oil (to not burn it) and if it’s lard, then 2 tbsp
Cumin powder - a pinch or 1/2tsp
What you need to do:
The first step always is to clean the meat/protein. For the liver, remove the membrane, soak it in milk/salt and lemon water/plain water, before or after cutting it into slices/pieces.
The second step is to gather everything else you need, including sharpening your knives, setting up your chopping board and getting the rest of the ingredients ready - in this case, slicing the onions, chopping the garlic, readying the broth/stock if you need to, wine/alcohol measured out, roux taken out of the fridge/freezer or the slurry being mixed well.
Once you are ready to cook, on medium heat on gas, add oil to the pan. You can definitely use a saucepan, will help in retaining moisture inside the liver. A cast iron pan will still be my choice but a normal, stainless steel pan will do too! I did oil first and then added the butter later in the process. But you can use both or either at this stage.
If you are going liver first, then wait for 5-10 minutes before flipping the liver to the other side. At this stage, you can either remove the liver from the pan or continue cooking. Add the onions and mix well. After 2 minutes, add the garlic.
Salt as you go but add small pinches of salt. This helps cook all the ingredients through with an equal distribution of salt throughout. If you have taken the liver out, you can cook the onions a bit to initiate the caramelisation process. If you haven’t, cook the onions for another 5 minutes with the liver. Add your pepper and ground cumin and mix well.
Add the stock/broth. Stir well to combine. Add the wine/alcohol and taste to see if everything is in order. Stir in the roux/slurry. Cover and cook further so that the wine does not cook out too much. I mean it will anyway since you are cooking it.
While this is being cooked, ready your other accoutrements. In my case, I wanted to eat slightly fried rice in a beef lard mixed with garlic and oregano. So, I cooked the rice and got it ready.
Once the sauce becomes slightly thick - like gravy - cook for another 5 minutes, adding a bit of butter or lard at the end to give it a nice shine. Take it off the heat and eat as you will!
Tip: you could also marinate the liver with oil, salt, pepper and cumin powder before cooking it!
While livers are pretty strong with their overall taste, I would say they are still versatile enough that they do really well with stews and dishes with a considerable amount of gravy. I grew up eating chicken-based curries back home and my favourite part, apart from the chicken leg, were the potatoes, the liver and the ghizzard. The liver and the potatoes soak up the gravy and it’s just the nicest thing ever.
If there is one take away from this recipe or my thoughts on liver, is to make sure you add in some kind of moisture while cooking the liver - otherwise it can be incredibly dry. And while that is a taste unto itself, and goes great with drinks, might I add, if that’s not what you are looking for, don’t be scared to add more stock/broth and cook it on medium low flame, covering it and cooking it until the water cooks out.
Another takeaway would be to diversify your diet! Livers are great, easily accessible, increases you hemoglobin count and make for a great spread, too! And no, it doesn’t have to be the same as foie gras, where I don’t actually like the practice of force-feeding an animal for your own gain (imagine if we did that to humans, huh). A great liver pâté also has a great amount of mushrooms to bring that fantastic umami taste. But don’t, on any account, be scared to try a new organ!
Have a liver recipe you’d like me to cook? Let me know!