Chopped Chicken Liver

This was the recipe that gave me absolute joy to work with, not because it’s exceptionally difficult or anything but because the homemade version 1. tastes NOTHING like the store-bought version, and 2. it tastes 3000x better. It’s the recipe that made me yell “what the fuck?!?” when I did the first taste test, because not only could I not stop shoving it into my mouth, but that it surprised me because of just how different it really is.

I must confess, I only really buy chopped liver at the store when I’m craving pate but am too lazy to make it myself. It’s super rich so I tend to not eat that much of it at a time. The store-bought kind also is very sweet, and really just tastes like puree’d liver.

I’m not entirely sure what the magic actually is that makes it so different and so delicious—is it the rendered chicken fat? The caramelized onions that are super sweet and fragrant? The crispy bits of chicken skin? I may never know. Liver is a cheap but high source of protein, and it’s an organ meat that’s treated both like trash and like gods. You either love it or hate it. When it’s pate, it’s treated as high end fancy cuisine, and expensive to boot but the part itself is one of the cheapest to purchase. I hate wasting any part of an animal as well, so the fact that it’s delicious is the cherry on top.

You can pulse half in the food processor and fold in the rest, but I just chopped it up and mixed so the different ingredients still maintained their own integrity. Caramelizing the onions and rendering the chicken fat (called “schmaltz”) and the creating the crispy skin byproduct (“gribenes”) takes a while, but my goodness it is worth it.

I like to cook the onions in big pieces and then chop them up small after they’ve caramelized—remember to do it slow. You want it caramelized, not burned, which can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, babying it on the stove. If it burns, it’ll turn everything bitter, so best not to rush. If you needed the seal of approval, Martha gave it two nubby thumbs, WAY UP.

Ingredients

• 1 lb chicken livers (make sure you inspect them well and remove any parts that have discolored—green indicates they touched bile which is bitter. You should also make sure the bile sac isn’t still attached. I don’t trim them otherwise, but you can if you’d like.)
• 1lb chicken skin and fat, chopped into pieces
• 1 large onion (should be bigger than your fist. I like sweet or vidalia), cut into rings
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 hardboiled eggs

1. Cook the chicken skin over medium until all the fat has been rendered and the skin is crispy and brown. Remove the skin along with half the fat into a large mixing bowl and set to the side.
2. Caramelize the onion in the remaining chicken fat over medium low heat, until caramelized. About 45 minutes. Caramelized onions are sweet and almost melt in your mouth. Chop and then add to the mixing bowl.
3. Cook the chicken livers over medium high heat until no more liquid comes out. I crush them in the pan so the middle cooks faster. Chop and add to the mixing bowl. Overcooking will cause it to be dry, so it’s best to take it off heat (residual heat will continue to cook it) right before it’s fully gray throughout.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste, two hardboiled eggs to the mixing bowl, and with a fork, mash along with the rest of the ingredients. Alternatively you can pulse half in the food processor and fold the rest together.