Chopped Liver | Imamother

chocolatecake

Tue, Nov 24 2015, 9:27 am

Anyone have a recipe to make your own chopped liver? I bought a fleishig immersion blender for the occasion. I want the kind of liver that I can serve in scoops. TIA

Blessing1

Tue, Nov 24 2015, 10:01 am

I'll be following this thread as I'm also searching for the perfect chopped liver recipe!

ahuva06

Tue, Nov 24 2015, 12:20 pm

Fry 2-3 onions with one pack of liver till the onions brown (in about 2 Tbsps oil). At the same time hard boil 4 eggs. Salt the liver when you're all done frying.
Allow to cool a little and then blend eggs and liver together.
Been making this recipe for years and get tons of compliments Smile

rgr

Tue, Nov 24 2015, 12:30 pm

Only fry liver for just under 5 min on each side so that the liver absorbs the taste of the onions. The actual liver does not need much cooking since its broiled as part of the kashering process. The trick is to fry the onions for a verrrry long time on low heat to get carmalized sweet onions

rachelle613

Tue, Nov 24 2015, 1:16 pm

Fry 2-3 onions very slowly in olive oil (you need a lot of oil). Leave until very, very brown. Add liver and fry for another 10 mins or so. Add salt, pepper and onion powder.
Boil up 5 eggs and mash. Blend liver and egg together.

Absolutely delicious!

(I use a box of liver~around 200 grams)

ez-pass

Tue, Nov 24 2015, 2:47 pm

I make it with a 2-3 onions. Sautee very slowly until really sift and flavorful. Add liver cook a few minutes
Spice with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and a drizzle of honey.
I blend it with 1 hard boiled egg. It is amazing!!! Everyone loves!! (Honey is the trick)

Amarante

Wed, Nov 25 2015, 3:56 pm

The chopped liver of my childhood Very Happy

I love his description of how to treat the ingredients - true Yiddish soul food If you have time, read the Chopped Liver Elegy he wrote.

http://forward.com/food/306536.....ped-liver/

Archetypal Ashkenazi Chopped Liver

2 pounds kosher chicken livers

2-3 tablespoons chicken fat, rendered into schmaltz by melting the fat slowly in a hot skillet

1 large onion, peeled and cut into very thin slices. (The thinness of the slices is essential to a true Ashkenazi chopped liver; the thinness adds a subtle sweetness.) Sauté the thin slices in the chicken fat, move them around in the skillet in a friendly way: you want their sweetness.

4 hard boiled eggs, shelled and roughly chopped into generous bite-sized pieces (not crumbled or ground down to little beads; the Alsatian Ashkenazim were a robust and hearty people). They liked their onions thin and their boiled eggs rough and significant-looking.

A small amount of salt

For gribenes (optional):

¼ cup schmaltz
Chicken skins in pieces

1) Wash the livers. Attentively arrange them on large torn, moistening pieces of brown paper bags, and place them under the broiler in a hot oven. After 3-4 minutes, remove the sheets of livers, and with a small fork turn each liver gently before returning the sheets to the broiler for the final browning (and kashering). In another few minutes the livers will be ready for the next step; examine them respectfully as you remove and separate them from the bloodied paper; they should all be toasty looking and easily combined with the eggs, the schmaltz, the sautéed onion and, if it is your choice, with the gribenes.

2) For the gribenes (an optional step): Sauté the chicken skins in the schmaltz, adding small amounts of water from time to time as the skins begin to brown and crackle. Nurse these cracklings, watch over them carefully, safeguarding against burning or charring. Your goal is to achieve harmoniously browned and crisp cracklings. Your gribenes will be an added-on pleasure, probably unknown to the 11th-century Alsatians. In place of uncompromising authenticity you will have an extra taste treat. But consider carefully: Do you want to cross the boundary between the real thing and latter-day emendations?

3) The final step is the combining and chopping. Combining is the formal procedure, in which you introduce your ingredients to one another. It must be done by hand, preferably with a wooden spoon, always gentler than steel or plastic or silver. What’s called for is a sturdy stirring, lasting only a few minutes. Then the chopping. By hand! No blender, Cuisinart or KitchenAid machine can chop the ingredients with the care, discretion and understanding brought by your own touch. Chop lightly, your goal is to do no harm to the ingredients assembled so scrupulously. Chop rhythmically, for at the right rhythm the eggs, the schmaltz, the thin onion slices will respond to you and one another in tune. With luck, you’ll feel a connection across centuries of Jewish history to our forbears, who endowed us with this indigenous, modest, simple appetizer.

Jules Cohn is a longtime preparer of chopped liver. His chopping skills were developed in small town New Jersey, in the post-WWII decades. His tutor was his grandmother; her batterie de cuisine: a worn wooden bowl and a steel chopping blade, attached to a wooden handle.

sped

Wed, Nov 25 2015, 5:25 pm

My favorite: Fry chicken liver and onions in plenty of oil until onions are well cooked. Blend them with hard eggs, mayo, salt, pepper ad garlic powder.

chocolatecake

Wed, Nov 25 2015, 5:46 pm

thanks all. I cooked onions in generous amount of oil for loooong time. added the liver cooked for ten more minutes. put in bowl with honey and an egg. blended. it came out delicious. exactly what I was looking for. I put in four diff containers for the freezer. then dh came home. smelled and saw the fresh liver and before I knew it there were only three containers left for freezer Wink

amother

Pewter

Sat, Jan 02 2021, 7:23 pm

Questions about making Chopped Liver:

1- Hand blender works for chopping livers?

2- Has anyone heard of adding some mashed sweet potatos for excellent flavor and sweetness? Someone told me a caterer does that, and you cant tell when its all combined.

3- Those who use a food processor, I assume the food processor then becomes fleishig, or if ingredients are cold, can processor still be used for Pareve?

amother

Natural

Sat, Jan 02 2021, 7:36 pm

A recipe I got from my neighbors around six years ago.
I had to borrow flishig good processer to make, so haven't made since, but was very good!

1 lb. liver
1 huge/2 reg. onion, cubed
Oil
Salt
Pepper
3 hardboiled eggs
1 T honey

Saute onions in lots of oil (covered) until carmelized. Add liver, continue sautéing 3-5 minutes with sprinklings of salt and pepper.
Grind in food processor with eggs and honey. Add a little hot water if needed for constitution

amother

Pewter

Sat, Jan 02 2021, 7:39 pm

amother [ Natural ] wrote:

A recipe I got from my neighbors around six years ago.
I had to borrow flishig good processer to make, so haven't made since, but was very good!

Can I get a smooth chopped liver with an appliance thats smaller (whos got enough storage space for another appliance, just for fleishig) and cheaper than a food processor?

amother

Natural

Sat, Jan 02 2021, 7:40 pm

amother [ Pewter ] wrote:

1 no.EDITED. DO YOU MEAN WHAT I CALL AN IMMERSION BLENDER? I THINK SOMEONE UPTHREAD USES IT. I ASSUMED U MEANT HAND BEATERS, WHICH WOULDN'T WORK
2 maybe! You can add honey
3- asked my dh. He said, ask your LOR. Internet is not a rav. It maybe a problem bc or duchka desakina. Ask your rav

amother

Natural

Sat, Jan 02 2021, 7:42 pm

I never asked, but I used my neighbors!machine that was especially flishig.
Dooesnt necessarily mean it's a must, but I'd assume she asked a rav and got that psak.

AGain, ask your LOR.

I wonder if an immersion blender should work

amother

Pewter

Sat, Jan 02 2021, 7:44 pm

amother [ Natural ] wrote:

I wonder if an immersion blender should work

Yes. The last thing I need is another appliance to store.

Chana Miriam S

Sun, Jan 03 2021, 10:11 am

We like chopped liver a lot. Recently I bought an entire cow liver from a wholesaler. It was a huge amount of work to soak and broil it ( for which of course we had separate equipment)

We had bought a grinder attachment for our Bosch so we used that. This is what I learned:

-If you make a mistake and overcook the liver, it’s very hard to grind.
-You don’t need to cook the liver again if you cooked it right in the koshering
-We use a lot of of caramelized onions ( cooked in schmaltz) and of the texture needs setting, chicken broth to make it wetter.
- we don’t use egg, but my father loves it with mostly egg and a bit of liver. It’s personal in terms of proportions.

With our grinding attachment, we bought too small of the grinding plate. If you have a choice but one with bigger holes initially so that the grind isn’t so difficult. You can always regrind with the smaller plate if needs be.

I froze three litres that were already ground but not seasoned and topped with schmaltz to avoid freezer burn ( in a deli container.) I also vac packed some less well done of the batch ( edible, but less well done) to be finished in a cast iron frying pan, probably with onions.

I know this isn’t a recipe but overall it took us a fair amount of learning to work out a system for us. I’ll NEVER buy a whole cow liver again though. It was just too much. Even with a deep freezer.

Chana Miriam S

Sun, Jan 03 2021, 10:14 am

amother [ Pewter ] wrote:

Yes. The last thing I need is another appliance to store.

You’ll need to peel the outer later of the liver off if iit’s cow liver. That tissue gets stuck on the grinder/blender. I think with chicken liver, less an issue.

With an immersion blender chicken liver will come out more like a purée or pate. To do that with cow liver you’ll need broth to lighter it enough to give it that smooth texture.

amother

Pewter

Sun, Jan 03 2021, 4:59 pm

I think caterers use chicken livers mostly, am I right?

What would chop the liver well besides a (fleishig) food processor that I have no interest in buying?

phoenixbubbe

Sun, Jan 03 2021, 5:30 pm

All the recipes posted are good and pretty similar. The final touch for prepping the onions, eggs and liver is to chop all together with a hockmesser in a wooden bowl. The finished consistency will be chunky but very soft. Add salt and pepper after chopping. It will taste like the chopped liver you ran home to sample on Friday afternoon.

amother

Pewter

Sun, Jan 03 2021, 6:37 pm

phoenixbubbe wrote:

No chopper can possibly get liver to be homogeneous (equally smooth).