Now, you’re probably asking, “How the heck do you eat liver without tasting it?! There’s no way I’ll be able to get my kids to eat anything with liver!”
I’m telling you it’s possible. I do it every week and I’m going to tell you how.
If you’ve looked at any of my meat recipes, you’ll most likely have seen liver as an added ingredient. That’s because it’s SO stinkin’ good for you! We’re talking Vitamins A, B12, riboflavin, iron, and folate just to name a few. You can read this article to learn more about it and what those vitamins do for your body.
Please understand, I don’t serve my family liver and onions. I wish I could say I liked liver, but I don’t. And I don’t like onions, either, for that matter. However, I want to provide my kids with a variety of nutritious foods. I don’t like to use vitamins if I know I can get it from the real source – food. And liver provides the kiddos with a lot of those vitamins and minerals. But serving plane ‘ole liver by itself just isn’t going to happen in this family.
So I hide it in our food.
If the kids see the liver while I’m making it and ask what it is, I tell them it’s liver. That it’s just another meat. And they’re good with that. If I make liver sound gross, they’ll think it’s gross. If I make it sound like just another food, then that’s how they’ll perceive it. I don’t try to deceive them, but neither do I have to tell them every single ingredient in the food I’m making. If they ask, I tell them. But I don’t serve them their plate and say, “Here’s your liver and veggies, eat up!”
Preparing liver
Where your liver comes from matters. I’ve had both beef liver from the grocery store, as well as from a local farmer. I can tell you with certainty that the grass fed liver from the farmer was sooo much better. It looked healthier, felt healthier, and actually tasted healthier. The liver from the store didn’t compare and was actually detectable in our food. So I highly recommend getting your liver from a grass fed source, whether it’s online from a reputable company or from your local farmers market.
You can do beef liver, chicken liver, calf liver or lamb liver. Lamb, calf and chicken have a milder flavor than the beef, which I can agree with when it comes to the chicken liver. However, when you use the liver, no matter what kind it is, in the examples I provide below, you won’t even be able to taste it!
I recommend soaking your liver in apple cider vinegar or lemon juice before blending it up if you’re just starting to add it into your diet. It helps to take some of the metallic taste away. You can soak anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours. I’ve soaked for as little as 10 minutes and found that we can’t taste it in our food. Although, I don’t usually soak the chicken liver, just the beef.
To prepare liver for grinding up and Freezing:
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- Place liver in a bowl and add in 1-2 tbsp of ACV or lemon juice. Fill bowl with just enough water to cover the liver. Soak for 30 minutes to a few hours. If the liver is thick then soak it for the longer timeframe.
- Remove liver from bowl, rinse and place it in a food processor or blender.
- Blend liver until it’s completely ground up. It’s going to look gross and gooey. It’s totally normal.
- Spoon liver into ice cube trays and freeze for a couple of hours.
- Pull liver out of freezer and let it sit for a few minutes. Either pop them out like ice cubes or use a fork to pull them out. Put them in a freezer safe container or baggy and you’re good to go!
Depending on your ice cube tray, each cube will be about an ounce. It’s recommended to have no more than 4 ounces of liver a week to get the recommended vitamins and minerals it provides. And obviously that depends on each person’s individual health needs. But it gives you an idea of how much to serve a week. By having the liver frozen in easy-to-use cube sizes, you’ll be giving your family a jam packed nutritious meal and they won’t even know it.
Ways to serve liver
Some ideas for serving your freshly made liver cubes include:
- If cooking ground hamburger meat for tacos or a stir-fry, pop out a couple cubes of liver and fry up with the meat. Put them in the meat when it’s halfway cooked through so as to not over cook the liver. Season your meat as you normally would.
- If making meatballs, meatloaf or hamburgers, pull out a liver cube or two and let them thaw a few hours before mixing it in with the other meats. Then cook them as you normally would.
Honestly, these are the easiest ways I’ve found to include liver into our diet. If it’s not easy, I’m not doing it! And if I can taste it, I’m not eating it. This has worked great for our whole family without the grumbling and whining because they don’t even know it’s in there! It’s not complicated and there’s very little prep work, and the benefits are so worth it.
5 thoughts on “How to Eat Liver Without Tasting it: Easy Prep for Multiple Uses”
I’ve actually been wondering about organ meats lately so this was an interesting read. I’m pretty curious so I may have to try this…I’m a bit nervous though
I was too when I first started, especially with how the kids would respond to it. But if you just start with one cube at a time in something that has a lot of flavor (like taco meat) then I promise you don’t even taste it, but you still get the benefits!
My husband loves liver but I have never been able to stomach it. I had never thought of hiding it in food without really having to taste it! I didn’t realize all the health benefits either. Very good read!
Love this article! Unlike many others, I enjoy the savoury, complex flavours of a liver! In asian cultures, we eat them with congee or steamed rice cakes drizzled with dark soy sauce and sesame oil. My mouth’s watering just typing this!
That sounds so yummy! Thanks for sharing!