I love liver. Chicken, beef and/or pork. Not a fan of foie gras, however.
But I’ve not had proper fried beef liver and onions for well over 10 years now. Loved it as a child and young adult but then gradually fell out of the habit of making it. Mostly because nobody will eat it with me. Not my wife and not my kids.
I’m craving it now, though.
I also like braunschweiger (liverwurst) sandwiches. I could eat that all day.
Mmmm, chicken livers sautéed in butter, with some onion. So unctuous and delicious. Last Saturday.
I like calves liver, lamb liver, and pork liver, too. Slice thin, sauté gently with some onions to cook until the center is just pink, I usually start the onions cooking first, to make sure they are done. It’s important not to over cook the liver, or it gets tough and sort of nasty.
How do you know? People’s tastebuds change between childhood and adulthood. Lots of things that people don’t like as children taste great as adults. If you haven’t tried it since you were a child, how do you know you don’t like it? You might be missing out on the best thing ever.
Personally I quite like it, but I find it difficult to cook properly. When I buy it as an oven-ready meal, or if I dine at a restaurant, it’s good. If I try to cook it myself, it’s pretty bad. Maybe some people’s distaste is down to incorrect preparation.
Last time I had it, not for a while. Maybe two months.
This. Exactly.
Last week. Still passing gas from the onions.
Chicken liver and onions, usually in the form of Ashkenazi-style chopped liver? Once a year or so. On toasted pumpernickel.
Beef liver? Not since I was a kid. Who can recommend a preparation for beef liver? We actually have some in the freezer right now, from our share of half a cow. My friend coordinated several people to split half a cow, and the liver was a freebie, so I thought we might as well take it. But just frying it with onions doesn’t sound that appealing. Anything more creative that I can do with it?
I tried fried liver once, decades ago. (I have no recollection of whether onions were part of the deal.) The texture, to me at least, was simply all wrong. A couple of bites were all I could take.
I hate it. I tried it many times from childhood into adulthood, and last tasted a batch prepared by a master chef. That was about 35 years ago. Nope. Blech.
When was the last time someone could make me eat something I hate? So… 8yo, I guess.
My grandmother made a batch when I was 12. Refused to eat it, was told I could go to bed hungry, so I did.
Many years ago my mother used to braise liver, sliced and trimmed (except for the outer membrane, which she kept, no one knows why) but otherwise unaltered from its packaged state, in reconstituted powdered milk (she preferred powdered milk because she could dilute it to the strength she became used to as a girl in rural Maine – even as an adult, in a restaurant, she would order only water or milk with ice, so it would be properly watered down), in a slow oven all afternoon (no, I don’t mean she sauteed the liver with onions first, or seasoned either it or the powdered milk, or provided any relief or nod to flavor at all, and serve it with potatoes (in rural Maine, at the time, birthday cake came with a side of potatoes). I must admit, it was fully cooked, yet still tender and pink, which was all to the good, but the lack of any texture or salt or spice or any flavor whatever made it seem more of a penance than a meal.
However, I’m about to stir-fry some beef liver tossed in egg white and rice flour, with bok choy, bean sprouts, carrots, onions, soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic, and homemade tamerind-habanero hot sauce. And I’m going to love it.
Huh, maybe I should try that. Liver has such a rich flavor, it doesn’t need seasoning. My favorite preparations involve butter or bacon, but I also sometimes just drop chicken livers into boiling water until they are barely cooked. And that’s sinfully delicious.
I took a little taste of L&O a loooong time ago and didn’t care for it; never tried it since.
It’s probably been several decades. My dad had me try it as a kid. Nope. When you can still remember what something tastes like decades later, in a bad way, it’s bad.
Funny, liver and onions is either really delicious, or just awful. I have beef (or calf) liver and onions at a diner once in a while. I have a friend who cooks us a pan of chicken livers with bacon and onions during the first cool days of fall! Delicious, with some french bread and butter, and probably one of the worst things you can eat. But we do it anyway, nibbling a kale salad ain’t gonna make us live any longer.
I cook chicken or turkey or goose liver with onions 3 or four times a year. I sometimes have fava beans and chianti (Amarone, if I am in funds) with it as a gustatory jest.