Beef liver recipes? Easy ones?

I have a friend who recently had a freezer malfunction; she now has 3 beef livers [among other items that defrosted] to cook in a hurry. No-body in the household is a huge liver fan, so something beyond liver & onions would be nice. [The livers are part of a 'whole cow' purchase. Looking around briefly, most recipes I find are liver & onions, usually calling for calf's liver, not a full-grown cow's].

Anybody have any good & easy ideas? Any favorite quick pate recipes? [Oh, and did I mention she has 3 kids under 7, so something time-consuming isn't going to be a useful suggestion for her current needs.]

Giovanna

If she truly has three beef livers -- that's 30-40 pounds of liver!

Gotcha. It's probably liver chunks, not whole livers. just passing along what I was told.

I'm imagine you're right . . . I HOPE you're right. That would be a LOT of liver.

Giovanna

The livers are probably sliced---they are good with a little s/p and thrown on a med hot grill(grilll pan)--should be pink in the middle for max tenderness

Grind the liver with chuck and sirloin for burgers.

Make pate.

Beef wellington.

I wind up with most of the offal when we cowpool - somewhere around here there is a thread on the subject. Bridgestone has a (not quick) Swedish terrine recipe that's excellent, and linked in that thread I posted a more traditional terrine that works well with beef liver.

Let me see, here...that's right, did liver in chianti (favas optional) for valentine's day...

Mhays wrote:I wind up with most of the offal when we cowpool - somewhere around here there is a thread on the subject.

Found: quadrant of cow.

I don't have a precise recipe, but I use beef liver to make chopped liver.

The basic procedure is to broil to well done, combine with onions browned in lots of schmaltz, hard-boiled eggs and salt and pepper and chop coarsely. (You can make it a smooth pate if you like, but I prefer texture.)

If you have any gribenes (from making the schmaltz), throw them in, too.

If you do this in a food processor (on-off pulses to chop), it's fairly quick. You can buy schmaltz at Jewish stores if you don't want to make your own.

To LAZ's post: I worked briefly in a NYC garment district deli and was shocked (at the time) to learn that the chopped liver was beef. I've never used it myself, but theirs tasted OK to me then.

When I was, equally briefly, on the line at the Levi restaurants when they first opened in the, then, Sears Tower we did a quick and pretty easy scallopini of liver dish which I recall this way:
[*]flour dusted and s&p seasoned strips of liver
* browned in clarified butter in a hot pan for a bit of crust
* a splash of white wine/garlic reduction poured on that
* some chopped fresh sage leaves on top of that just before serving.

The liver was surely veal, but it might work with beef. Though the heartier chianti recipe mentioned above sounds good and probably more a propos for beef liver.
Still, the reduction took about 15 min. and the rest took about 3-4 min. in the pan, so what's to lose?

mrbarolo wrote:To LAZ's post: I worked briefly in a NYC garment district deli and was shocked (at the time) to learn that the chopped liver was beef. I've never used it myself, but theirs tasted OK to me then.

Beef liver is what my bubbe always used.

I'd love to know more about beef vs. chick. liver. Who, where, when?
I would have thought, possibly wrongly, that beef livers would have been pretty rare in the old country, what with people using cows mostly for milk and keeping them alive as long as possible.
I wonder for whom, under what conditions, beef was a practical, available choice. (Aside from your bubbe.)
Was it an urban vs. rural choice, for folks who could go to a butcher in Vienna or Berlin or Krakow or Prague and order up beef liver vs. providing their own?

I don't know from the Old Country. I do know that in this country, beef liver is cheaper than either calf's or chicken liver.

I'd guess that in past times it might have been calf's liver, because veal used to be cheaper than chicken, especially in cities. Veal was a byproduct of the dairy industry. Chicken was pricey, special-occasion food. ("As the good book says, when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick.")

Happy New Year!

Not quite sunset, so I've time to post that Gil Marks says gehakte leber originated with medieval Jews in the Alsace, who used goose liver.

Your note about chicken's having been pricey in the old days reminded me of having read that Herbert Hoover's famous "a chicken in every pot," is now widely misunderstood to refer to everyone having access to basic, decent food, whereas he was actually talking about a vision of luxury.

Happy New Year.

mrbarolo wrote:Your note about chicken's having been pricey in the old days reminded me of having read that Herbert Hoover's famous "a chicken in every pot," is now widely misunderstood to refer to everyone having access to basic, decent food, whereas he was actually talking about a vision of luxury.

Well, it's unclear, since Hoover never actually said it.

The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum wrote:The link between Hoover and the phrase "a chicken in every pot" can be traced to a paid advertisement which apparently originated with the Republican National Committee, who inserted it into a number of newspapers during the 1928 campaign. The ad described in detail how the Republican administrations of Harding and Coolidge had "reduced hours and increased earning capacity, silenced discontent, put the proverbial 'chicken in every pot.' And a car in every backyard, to boot." The ad concluded that a vote for Hoover would be a vote for continued prosperity.

Hi everyone,
Ii found this thread by searching for where to buy calf' sliver in Chicago-land...

so - any hints as to where I can find it?

I really need to find it - we just found out that our one-year old daughter is anemic and calf's liver has the most iron out of all other meats...

I'd drive pretty much anywhere in Chicago to get it, as long as I can freeze most of it when I get home

thanks,
Sofia

Sofia, almost any grocery store will have calf's liver; it's what is usually commercially available - beef liver is usually harder to find. Ask at the meat counter and they'll direct you.

If you're having difficulty at your local Jewel, I've seen it at smaller ethnic grocers on the northside, like Marketplace on Oakton. What part of town are you in? We can probably direct you more specifically if you give us more information.