Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Liver and Onions Done Proper

The ONLY way to make liver.

Rinse liver.

Soak in milk.

Mix flour with salt and pepper to taste. Remove liver from milk and hit both sides of each slice o' liver.



Sautee a couple onions in butter. Remove onions. Add more butter to pan and use to fry liver on medium heat. Don't overcook.





Tender as tender can be:



Mmm, mmm, fuggin' good!




Travis

You forgot the most important part. Start with pork liver and if you have none, young deer liver. miles

fixt

Seems simple enough!

Beef liver.

I made five pounds. I ate liver for a week. Heaven.



Travis

If you like liver, never ever never take a parasitology course.

Butter is good for frying onions but there's room for improvement.

Bacon grease is the schit for frying liver.

Crumbled bits of bacon makes it more gooder too.

No. It overpowers the liver. Your opinion is wrong.


Travis

Is parasitology a cooking class?



Travis

Yes. Maybe. At night school in Seattle.

I Agree Keith. I have tried and tried to like liver, but just can't get it down. Beef, pork, venison, chicken, it doesn't matter. I've tried it all and can rarely get it past my nose.

Mike

Laughin'

Bacon grease or butter ... it's all good. I luv me some good fresh beef or venison liver with caramelized onions.

Chicken livers and gizzards are veddy good too.

I like guts done right.

Looks good, ate a lot as a kid, only beef.

L-n-O!

Much better than beef liver...

Deep fried chicken gizzards are very good.

I love chicken livers.

Tried gizzards a bunch of times. Just can't like 'em.



Travis

Sean,

Looks good. Is that beef?




Travis

I'll eat any chicken or turkey gizzard I can get...

Thanks Travis.
Venison with red onions. I like it just a bit on the rare side, and have no interest in a parasite course either.

How about a turkey buzzard gizzard?

Photo courtesy of Follically Challenged, who took it at my house last year.

Thank you for your tutorial. It seems about perfect.

How long do you soak it in the milk? I've never done it like that. Does it draw out some of the blood?

Been doing exactly like that for a few generations.
Once or twice during the month in Summer.
Once a week in winter.
Thanks Travis
Going shoppin' tommorow for a couple of meals worth

Wife will sometimes sear it a little then put it in a glass bake dish with the onions and some flour. When you bake it it makes its own gravy. Over mashed potatoes it is heavenly. The more onions the better.
Bill

Why are you frying your catfish bait with onions?

Gotta be a little hard to get ahold of...

I don't believe in parasites anyway.




Travis

That's not a bad idea.



Travis

Is FC bald?



Travis

I use chunks of real cats.

Shrapnel has a steady supply this year.



Travis

went past one of them yuppified restaurants on my way home from camp a while back and they had a sign outside for Liver Stroganoff. i about chundered out the window just thinking about that monstrosity.

Yeah. It's supposed to tame down the liver taste in the liver.

A couple hours is fine. But leaving them sit all day in the fridge in a bowl of milk is fine two. Whatever you have time for.



Travis

I ate up all we had in the freezer from the steer we bought last year.

Need more cow.



Travis

Dang that looks great. Gotta get to cooking....

You deserve it birthday boy.



Travis

I love fresh venison liver.
Soak it in a fast moving mountain creek all day to leach out blood, then sice thin, dip in flour and fry with lots of onions over a campfire.

Ate so much in deer camp one year, that I had the "scoots" for two days. Learned not to make such a pig of myself. (GRIN!)

Virgil B.

Do you drink the liver milk?

I love a good glass of bloody liver milk.


If you try gizzards again, try battered and deep fried, then dip in nacho cheese.

That's how I do it in Poland.

When in rut, the bull moose drink cow moose urine. The uric acid raises hell with their liver. With that in mind, I discard all bull moose livers.

I let the kids have the milk.

Did you go the Polish State Fair and eat until you schit your pants?



Travis

I tried cooking and eating moose liver once and that was enough for me. IIRC, it was a young forked horn bull that I shot.

That's too far of a drive for me, and too big of a crowd.

I'm damn near a Canadian by location, I'd just as soon stay home and schit my pants.

WHAT?! You mean to tell me that fried liver ISN'T supposed to look like a dead dried up salamander??? When I was a kid, my Mom used to make us eat liver.

Only, her liver looked like this:



I love my Mom and love her cooking but liver is not one of the things she does well. I think I would rather eat a salamander...

You think?

T-minus 4 days 'til we do it again, and I'm sure I'll be able to report that I had the wurst time...

'Flave, to prove our follicular bona fides, here are shiny pates by the pair:







The flesh pictured in Ready's post was too young to have parasites. We didn't need to soak it in milk, as the deer still had milk on their muzzles.







As one who'd theretofore eschewed liver, I was mightily impressed. It was roughly the equivalent of taking someone who'd never eaten steak, directly to Smith & Wollensky.

FC

Good gravy! That's a lot of sexy to be crammed into one pic.



Travis

Damn strait, we're bringin' sexy back! Though we mighta dropped it a time or two along the way.

Hopefully Ready can loan me a .338WM or better this time, to be sure I get good penetration on those chihuahuas.

FC

You get a .308, that's all.

Why don't I get invited to anybody's house?




Travis

Please consider yourself henceforth invited. You just have to GFY, thats all...

+1 definitely with mashed potatoes !!!

Color me fugged!



Travis

ETA?

My Mum used to make the most divine "homey" casserole style chicken liver & chicken hearts dish ! Served over rice.

Can still visualise & taste !!!

Thought long & hard about doing venison liver, but have always been put off by the colour !

Just thinking back; I think my Mum always used buttermilk to soak "things" in.

There's really no better than Elk liver...












Gotta be served with roasted garlic mashers too...




And a hell of a good bottle of red...

Well, I will pass on the liver, but I am always on the lookout for recommendations on red wine.

I can get Cline's California Zinfandel here in Sweden at a reasonable price, so if you say it is good I will pick up a bottle!

Cheers!

John

Its bloody h*ll when something looks good, smells good, but doesn't taste good.

Are we still talking about liver?

John

Don't know about you, but I wasn't talking about the wine.

I'm with you on the bacon thats how I do venison liver

I make it pretty much the same was as Travis, with either butter or bacon grease. The only thing I add is coffee. My Mom would always cook it as 'flave described, but just before it was ready to serve, she'd turn up the flame and pour about a mug or so of that morning's left over coffee in the pan, and then reduce it down and serve. I still do it that way today. May seem strange but it's damn good.

I'm going to have to try that.



Travis

Couldn't hurt.

Probably helps with the parasitology.




Travis

My dog likes it.

The parasitic cocktail ...

Kahlua and liver blood milk on the rocks.

Are you man enough?

That's saying a lot...dogs can be very picky eaters. But, they will also eat their own poop...I don't even think travis would do that. (would he?)

I like liver and onions from all types of critters - pork, beef, venison, chicken, turkey and bison. My bride enjoys L & O, too, but we both prefer to cook this dish in a cast iron skillet on the grill side burner, The smell of fried liver and onions (or fish) fried inside the house seems to hang around too long for either of us.

Pic of some bison L & O I made a few years ago. Sadly, I ran out of bison liver shortly thereafter.

Damn that looks good...

Got me a fresh bucket o' chicken livers for tomorrow.

Love me some McLiver.



Travis

Now you all have me craving some.

Ella

I am firmly in the beef liver camp; pork liver is musty and chicken liver is for catching catfish.

I gots me some chicken liver in the fridge...



Travis

I never liked liver until after eating some pronghorn liver when I was about 20. Liked that (it's very mild flavored), and then tried other liver and liked it too--as long as it wasn't overcooked. Finally figured out the reason I hadn't liked liver before was my grandmother had served it to me the first time, and she overcooked everything--the reason my dad liked his fried eggs crispy and toast black.

I figure the parasites add variety to the amino acids.

Same here,,,, I have a big Camp Chef two burner that lives out on the deck for just that reason.
Needless to say, I don't eat much liver or fish in the winter.

The smell of Chicken livers does't bother me though so I make Dirty Rice pretty often regardless of the season.

I'd luv you long time for some chicken livers fried in bacon grease.

When's dinner?

In a little over three weeks I'm going ML muley hunting in Utah.

I'm packin' butter, flour, S&P, sweet onions, and bacon.

I plan on eating guts.

Last night I had some of THE BEST venison liver and onions that I've ever ate. This was the third time I've made L&O since going hunting and I added one extra ingredient that really made it special. Some thin slices of deer meat. The alternating bites of liver and mild tender meat was superb.

Here's how I did it ...

Soak the liver in saltwater, slice, then soak again in saltwater to remove all the blood.

Fry two strips of bacon til done and cut into chunks.

Drain the bacon grease and set aside

Add a couple of dollops of butter and fry the onions, remove from pan and set aside

Add the bacon grease, dredge the liver in milk, then in flour with S&P, throw 'em in the grease

Once the liver starts to brown, dredge the slices of meat in milk, flour S&P, and add to the skillet

When the liver and meat is browned add the onions and bacon, toss, stir, let it simmer for just a bit ... done.

I even used liver that I froze when I got home. The next time I get a deer the first meal is going to be liver, bacon, onions, and tenderloin

The only thing I can add is if you put some red wine in the skillet to deglaze the you'll end up with a superb gravy.

Certain dishes just have to be done right of they are horrible, and liver and onions is one of them.

Made L&O's in camp last Tuesday. Some fried heart too. Yesterdays forked horn sure does taste good at 8000 feet. Used leftover liver for breakfast on the weekend, damn that is as good with bacon and eggs, and a fried whole jalapeno!

Wild boar L&O at the house tonight. Father in law and my wife had a hankerin'.

Was happy to oblige:



Can have been much more than 20 min. between the two pics...



Good times.

Now I'm hungry again.



Travis

And only if you don't really like your dog.