Beef liver paté - it's not on everyone's list of go-to comfort foods. Liver is something that we all SHOULD be eating, but reality is that it's often intimidating to prepare. I've put off making beef liver my whole pregnancy (I made some chicken liver paté), but then all of a sudden, I started to CRAVE some beef liver!!! This recipe absolutely hit the spot. It is not a complicated list of ingredients, and it blends up in only 15 minutes. If you jar it in mason jars while it is still warm, it seals and saves for over a week and is a delicious - and VERY NUTRIENT DENSE - addition to crackers or a salad any time of the day! Anytime I feel like my body needs a boost of nutrition - I know I need to eat some liver. Beef liver in particular is high in bio-available vitamin A and D as well as bio-available heme iron! The kind our bodies can actually absorb very effectively and that raise our hemoglobin levels.

"Liver is practically the perfect food for pregnancy, providing protein, B12, iron, folate and other key nutrients for reproductive health and fetal development." -Dr. Axe draxe.com

Lynn Razaitis has a great article about liver on the Weston A. Price website that says:

"So what makes liver so wonderful? Quite simply, it contains more nutrients, gram for gram, than any other food. In summary, liver provides:

• An excellent source of high-quality protein

• Nature’s most concentrated source of vitamin A

• All the B vitamins in abundance, particularly vitamin B12

• One of our best sources of folic acid

• A highly usable form of iron

• Trace elements such as copper, zinc and chromium; liver is our best source of copper

• An unidentified anti-fatigue factor

• CoQ10, a nutrient that is especially important for cardio-vascular function

• A good source of purines, nitrogen-containing compounds that serve as precursors for DNA and RNA."

-from "The Liver Files"

Remember that it is essential to eat meat and organ meats from animals that have been raised on fresh pasture without hormones, antibiotics or commercial feed. Pasture-raised animal products are much higher in nutrients than animal products that come from commercial feedlots. - Chris Kresser, "Liver: Nature's Most Potent Superfood"

Here is a step-by-step on how I made it! First you need some HIGH QUALITY beef liver. This is not where you want to skimp or cut corners... liver is only as healthy as the animal was that you are sourcing it from. I personally get all my beef and my beef liver from Deer Run Farm of Amelia. Second, you need some grass-fed butter. Likewise, the butter is the other superfood in this recipe, supplying a super healthy fat profile as well as more fat-soluble vitamins! Yay! I use grass-fed Kerrygold butter from Costco because it is economical (well, at least more so than other options!)- and we use a LOT of it at our house. :)

Ingredients:

1/4 c. grass-fed butter, (I used Kerrygold)

1 onion, roughly chopped

4 garlic cloves, roughly minced

1 lb. grass-fed, grass-finished beef liver

3 Tbs. red wine vinegar

juice of 1/2 a lemon

1 tsp. dried thyme

2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, washed and dried

1 tsp. pink himalayan or celtic salt

1/4 c. grass-fed butter

1 c. stock, either homemade or this brand

Serve with Simple Mills Sea Salt Crackers or pork chicharrones! I've lately been just eating them on the pork rinds because I have been avoiding nuts and seeds and trying to keep it "carnivore!" These Epic ones are my FAVORITE!!

Directions:

The first step is to melt 1/4 c. of the butter into a heavy-bottom pan (like this Lodge cast iron dutch oven) on about medium heat. I use my Le Creuset dutch oven and it works GREAT. Add the chopped onions and begin to sauté the onions until they caramelize. This adds a lot of nutty, sweet flavor to the paté! Next add the garlic and sauté a few more minutes and until the onions are golden brown.

Rinse the liver off in some cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Add the liver to the pan and cook on medium low heat until browned all the way through. Then add the red wine vinegar and the lemon juice and the herbs and salt. Keep the heat medium to medium-low and boil for a few minutes until some of the liquid cooks off.

Next, add all the contents of the pan to a high-powered blender such as this one (which I used) or this smoothie blender one. I am going to try the smoothie blender one with the stainless steel cup next time I make this because I think the "pro extraction" will do a better job getting a really creamy and smooth paté texture! The first one, however, did the job. Add the stock and additional butter and blend on high until there are no more chunks and the paté is very smooth and creamy. Add more butter or stock if necessary and keep blending until you get the perfect texture!

I divided this recipe into thirds. I put two-thirds of it into two 8 oz. ball mason jars. And the other third I ate right away in this dish with Simple Mills sea salt crackers. They pair together perfectly! Or the Epic pork rinds! If you put the mason jar lids on tightly while the pate is still warm, it will form a seal and last for 10 days in the refrigerator. I have been trying to eat through a batch this size every week trying to get my iron up! I've been really enjoying it!!

UPDATE: I was not digging the "metallic" taste that the top of the pate gets once its been stored in the refrigerator, so I tried the traditional method of sealing it with a thin layer of melted butter and it is SO MUCH BETTER! All you do is melt some extra butter in a pan, put the warm pate in the mason jars as normal, and then pour a little bit of butter on the top of each so that the pate is completely covered. Seal the lids really tight. Refrigerate. When you do this, the pate will keep even longer! I will eat it for up to a month or more and it still tastes amazing!! :)

Hope you enjoy it too!

~Sallie

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