I was looking up faggots recipes, and they all call for pig’s liver. I don’t think I’ve ever seen pig livers for sale. Can they be made with calves liver instead? Around here I can get beef liver, calf liver, and chicken liver. Pork shoulder and pork belly are, of course, no problem.
And if you have your own recipe (with ingredients I can get), please post them!
Never had nor made it but I can’t see why you can’t use calves liver and get a slightly different flavor. I have heard of chicken livers recommended as a substitute for pig’s liver.
You may want to check some Asian groceries if you’ve got them by where you’re at. I also find it at Mexican groceries sometimes, as well. I would say beef liver is closer to pork liver, but pork liver is the “liveriest” of the more usual livers (beef, pork, veal, chicken, goose.) I would pair beef and pork as being similar to each other, with a distinct, I dunno, iron flavor to them, and veal and chicken being much more gentle.
I would say, don’t. Just cook something separate for the Mrs or wait until she’s out of town to make yourself some Johnny L.A. food. If you really wanted to try, I’d go with something milder like veal or chicken livers, but I suspect the flavor is not so much the problem as the ick factor. Personally, I love me some livers. But I never cook them when my wife is around.
Me too. From the picture, I think I would ask for seonds.
Seriously, the dish is also called savoury ducks. For cryin’ out loud, just call it pork gizzard meatballs, that’s what it is. And you won’t have to worry about offending someone or disappointing them with a lack of duck ingredients.
And, now that I know they’re made out of liver, I’ll probably avoid them…unless they’re really spicy. Do they come with minced jalapenos in them? Don’t lie to me.
If I were going to eat a pig liver (which I most emphatically am not,) but if I were, I would look up the local CSAs and see if any of them raise pigs. It’s just the right time of year for them to be ready to start butchering them for Christmas hams.
Factory pigs are raised in horrific conditions and fed god-awful messes of chemicals. Your Mrs. is right, you really do not want to eat one of those livers. Get yourself one from a nice organic farmer who feeds his pig corn and grain and other such decent stuff.