How to Cook Liver for Finicky Adults

I don't personally love the taste of liver.

I just recognize it as one of the most nutrient dense foods available. It seems to contain abundant nutrients that are hard to find from other food sources, and seems to even be good for our skin. Additionally, it's extremely inexpensive.

So I've been experimenting with different ways of cooking it. This one absolutely blew me away.

I'm lucky enough to live in Lowell, MA. Yeah, I mean that. One of the great aspects of living in Lowell is that I have easy access to Laotian and Cambodian cuisine. A lot of the dishes from these cultures are paleo friendly without much tweaking. So I drew inspiration from what I'd sampled in area restaurants to come up with this dish. I didn't aim for it to be some sort of fusion dish -- I only wanted to use elements I'd found in Southeast Asian food to make the liver taste as good as possible.

I call this liver for adults because it's spicy. I'm sure you could modify it by making it less spicy, but anyone who would do such a thing would not be reading this job. Such a person would not dare.

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In a mixing bowl, prepare the spices:

1 tbsp cocoa power
2 tbsp fresh ground coriander seed
1 tsp fresh ground cumin seed
salt/pepper

Now, add the following to the bowl, all chopped finely:


4 stalks, parsley
4 green onions
1 stalk, lemongrass
2-3 sprigs of mint
Fistful of bitter greens, such as dandelion

And then:

A inch or so of peeled, fresh galanga root -- use ginger if you can't find any
Two serrano peppers, sliced medium and
Two thai bird peppers, red and yellow if possible just for looks, sliced thin thin thin.

This should create a mountain of greens in the bowl.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Now add 1 pint of chicken livers to the bowl. It will looks like a very small amount of meat compared to the veggie mountain, but breath easy. This is how it should be.

Now, take your clean hands and dig in, mixing the mixture. This is not for the faint of heart. Liver doesn't look like ground beef. It looks, well, real. If you are squeemish about such things, get someone better looking than you are to mix it for you.

Make sure you wash your hands carefully immediately afterwards.

Place the entire contents of the mixing bowl into a cast iron or oven safe skillet, preheated, and then treated with a cooking oil of your choice.

Brown the mix for about four minutes and then place the entire contents into the skillet and brown for about four minutes. Don't stir it. Don't touch it. Don't even look at it. Just let it cook.

Now place the skillet into the oven, wait about ten minutes, and reduce the heat to 200. Let it go low and slow. Go read a book or do some kettlebells. Play with the dog. Come back in about an hour, erring on the side of cooking longer.

You can do a neat little reduction with a 1/4 cup of coconut water and the fresh juice of half a lime, or you can simply add the fresh lime juice straight to the meal while it's cooling.

If you want to serve it up as a kind of superchili, add some nice salsa, pickled hot peppers, parmesan cheese if you use dairy, and a few more sprinkles of the parsley.

If you want to go towards a Southeast Asian style, cut an iceberg lettuce head in half and use the leaves to scoop up the mix.

If you want to really impress your date, hard boil an ostrich egg and serve it inside that. Just make sure you really, really like them first. Otherwise, they might not leave you alone.