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    Home » Meat and Game

    Venison Liver Pate

    Published: Dec 9, 2021 Modified: Feb 19, 2024 Author: Alan Bergo

    Jump to Recipe

    Looking for a good pate recipe for venison liver (or any liver for that matter?) here you go, this is my go-to. This is basically the same recipe I was taught by one of my old chefs, who learned it from a master butcher from Rome (Chef Fillipo Caffari).

    Venison liver pate recipe
    Venison liver pate, with wild grape jelly and cinnamon raisin toast.

    Mostly we would make it with poultry livers, but it's just as good made with livers from larger animals. The secret is a bit of apple cooked and pureed with the liver that helps cut it and underline the sweetness, along with plenty of butter and good toasted or grilled bread (cinnamon raisin toast is the perfect partner!). 

    Leeching liver: my secret trick 

    With venison, goat and lamb though, I do take some additional steps to calm the liver flavor, a kind of secret trick I developed. Often with liver, recipes may instruct you to soak the organ in milk or dairy, which works ok, but for me, is really a starting point to expand on. 

    Soaking venison liver
    Cutting the liver and soaking it in water helps it leech faster than immersing a whole liver in liquid.

    Soaking a liver in milk, especially if it's a whole liver, will soften some of the irony taste people associate with venison liver, but, if you really want to calm that flavor down, you can do what I do: soak it in multiple changes of water, with the liver cut into pieces, which is a more aggressive way of leeching out some of the irony taste. 

    Soaking the liver whole in multiple changes of water works, but cutting it into pieces first creates more surface area for the water to touch, which translates to a faster and more efficient dilution of the livers flavor. Pre-treating liver this way is powerful, and, you can remove the flavor so much that the liver can almost be tasteless, for better or worse. 

    Crab Apple-Duck Liver Mousse with Elderberry Jelly
    If you don't want to seal the ramekins with melted butter, you can use melted fruit jelly-anything that will keep air out. 

    For an experiment, you can try cooking and tasting pieces of the liver throughout the leeching process to see what I'm talking about here, the flavor change is real-try it and let me know what you think. I like to serve liver pate with sweet things, like jam or chokecherry jelly, as well as toast with fruit in it-your favorite cinnamon raisin bread, toasted up crisp, will be just fine. 

    Venison liver pate recipe

    More Nose to Tail Venison Recipes

    • Homemade Braunschweiger or Liverwurst
    • Smoked Venison Kidneys
    • Venison Trotters
    Venison liver pate recipe
    Print Recipe Pin Recipe
    4.92 from 12 votes

    Venison Liver Pate

    A simple pate modeled after my old chef’s from Rome. Sprinkle a bit of coarse salt on portions before serving. Top with jam, preserves, sautéed apples, and eat with hot buttered toast or grilled bread. Yield: 3 cups
    Prep Time30 minutes mins
    Cook Time30 minutes mins
    Purging time1 day d
    Course: Appetizer, Charcuterie
    Cuisine: American, Italian
    Keyword: Liver Pate, Venison liver
    Servings: 8
    Author: Alan Bergo

    Ingredients

    • 1 lb venison liver cut into 1 inch pieces
    • ½ teaspoon pink salt sodium nitrite (optional, this preserves the color)
    • Tart crab apples or other apples peeled and diced to yield 2 cups (8 oz)
    • ½ cup cognac or brandy
    • 1 cup 4 oz yellow sweet onion, diced
    • 2 Tablespoons flavorless cooking oil for browning the liver
    • 6 oz 1.5 sticks, unsalted butter, chilled and diced
    • ½ teaspoon kosher salt plus more to taste
    • 1 tablespoon maple syrup
    • ⅓ cup heavy cream warmed
    • 10 scrapes of nutmeg optional
    • High heat cooking oil as needed for browning the livers

    Instructions

    Leeching the liver

    • Cover the pieces of venison liver in cold water to cover by twice their volume, put a lid on the container, and refrigerate for 24 hours, changing the water, 2-3 times during the process, or every 8 hours, or as often as you can remember. Consider setting a timer.

    Cooking and preparing

    • Remove the liver from water, then pat dry. Heat a pan with a small amount of oil, then brown the liver pieces well. Add the apples and onions adding a little water to the pan if it threatens to get too dark. Cook until the apples and onions are completely cooked and starting to color, about 5-10 minutes.
    • Add the cognac or brandy and flambee the mixture, then cook until almost all the liquid has evaporated. Puree the mixture in a highspeed blender, or food processor, adding the pink salt, maple syrup, kosher salt and pepper to taste, gradually adding the diced, cold butter and the cream until the mixture is very smooth.
    • Pass the mixture through a chinois strainer (optional) add the nutmeg, taste and adjust the seasoning, then place in a labeled, dated, container. Cover the pate with plastic wrap, pressing it down onto the pate to prevent oxidization if refrigerating.
    • The pate will keep in the fridge for 3 days, or it can be frozen. I like to portion the pate into 1 cup ramekins, covering them with a film of melted butter or fruit jam to prevent oxidization.
    « Balsamic Blue Cheese Sauce for Venison
    How to Make Boneless Venison Ribs »

    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. Luke

      December 12, 2024 at 5:05 am

      Hi there, I am a hunter who has always discarded offal, but love pate from the shops. I just have it a go with a liver of a young fallow (8/9 months old) that I shot 6 days ago and the smell during cooking was quite off putting. Have I left it too late with the liver and is there a chance it spoilt in 6 days? The liver was in a fridge within 30 minutes of the kill and deer wax neck shot so no gut spoilage of any sort. I put it in the jars and will try once more when cooled. Keen to hear your thoughts.

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        December 12, 2024 at 11:42 am

        Hi Luke, our sense of smell is a natural defense against ingesting things that could make us sick. I have a giant buck leg in my fridge that was taken a week ago I'll process tmrw, but offal-hearts, livers, kidneys, fat, and everything else has a much shorter shelf life than meat. It should be processed or frozen ASAP after harvesting and can't sit around like whole muscles can. I would try again next year with a very fresh liver.

        Reply
    2. Adele Vaverchak

      October 28, 2024 at 7:14 pm

      5 stars
      I am using this recipe tonight on a huge liver of a buck. Too tough to fry and eat. Thanks for the suggestions and recipe.

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        November 01, 2024 at 10:47 am

        Thanks Adele. Yeah venison liver can be tricky. I'll be cooking some up next weekend at deer camp.

        Reply
    3. Freyda Black

      November 11, 2023 at 11:53 pm

      5 stars
      I am blessed with an abundance of venison livers, gifts from the hunters around here do not appreciate offal as I do. However, much as I love liver, calf, goat, sheep, or poultry, venison liver has always been just too bloody for me. Your soaking solution sounds wonderful and I look forward to trying it, and this recipe for pate, right away (deer season is open and liver is waiting in the refrigerator!)

      I have a question about substitutions. For cultural reasons, I simply cannot use dairy products with meat. What would you recommend as a substitute for the butter and cream? There are many "plant butters" out there, although olive oil is my favorite, or perhaps rendered duck or chicken fat? The cream is what stumps me. Is it necessary to find a substitute? Should I risk something like cashew cream? I am not sure what quality it adds to the pate that it would then lack. I grew up eating "chopped liver", made with onions and grebens (diced chicken skin fried crisp in chicken fat), which I still consider heavenly.

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        November 12, 2023 at 12:12 pm

        Hey Freyda. The purpose of the cream and butter is to add fat, and to keep the pate spreadable when it's cooled-otherwise it would be grainy. As long as whatever you're adding has fat it should work. Instead of butter I would absolutely add rendered poultry fat-that's probably the best substitute for the butter.

        Reply
    4. Lyana Snow

      August 10, 2023 at 2:47 pm

      For those that don’t consume any alcohol, what would you suggest using in place of the cognac or brandy?

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        August 10, 2023 at 2:59 pm

        Hi. If it isn’t clear, you’re not consuming any alcohol here as it’s all cooked off during the process and evaporates. If you had to you could deglaze with a splash of chicken stock, but I’d prefer to borrow a splash from neighbor as there really isn’t a substitute, and a deglaze of brandy or cognac goes into every pate I’ve ever made.

        Reply
    5. Lyana Snow

      August 10, 2023 at 2:47 pm

      5 stars
      For those that don’t consume any alcohol, what would you suggest using in place of the cognac or rum?

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        August 27, 2023 at 4:35 pm

        I would borrow a cup from a neighbor, or skip it.

        Reply
      • Chantelle

        November 20, 2023 at 12:42 pm

        5 stars
        Hi Alan. When do I add the maple syrup?
        Thanks
        Chantelle

        Reply
        • Alan Bergo

          November 20, 2023 at 1:50 pm

          Hi Chantelle. It's added at the end with the salt.

          Reply
      • William L McGinnis

        March 21, 2024 at 11:20 am

        5 stars
        Good news: you won't be consuming alcohol. The flambe step destroys the ethanol, and all you're left with is the flavor.

        Reply
        • Alan Bergo

          March 21, 2024 at 1:18 pm

          Thanks for chiming in William.

          Reply
    6. Nick Robinson

      November 27, 2022 at 2:07 am

      5 stars
      I love this recipe, it’s a game changer for venison pate, I have made it three times now with the latest using a kilo of liver. I use Roe livers and find that I prefer 8 hours leeching as they aren’t too strong and I like some flavour left but it’s worth experimenting for personal taste. I usually change ingredients in recipes as I use them but the results of this one are so good I tend to stick to your recipe. It’s very popular with friends and family.

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        November 27, 2022 at 8:15 am

        Thanks Nick.

        Reply
        • AJ

          November 29, 2023 at 9:11 pm

          5 stars
          Why the pink salt? Can a person substitute for kosher salt? It's is nor cured, so that's why I'm asking.

          Reply
          • Alan Bergo

            November 30, 2023 at 9:35 am

            IF you don't have some just skip it, which is why it's listed as optional. It's for color, but it will also extend the shelf life and improve the flavor a little.

            Reply
          • Dave Wygonowski

            September 13, 2024 at 5:50 pm

            5 stars
            A little celery seed powder works also, instead of the chemical version. Use it in my kielbasa.

            Reply
            • Alan Bergo

              September 16, 2024 at 4:01 pm

              FYI, celery is a natural source of nitrites-literally the same thing as pink salt. Lovage too. The only difference is that plants have a variable amount of the compound. Celery seed will also ruin the flavor added in a quantity large enough to color the pate.

    7. Poly

      August 17, 2022 at 7:56 am

      4 stars
      Awesome..
      I just discovered your site because of the fermented knotweed head recepies. Japanese knotweed or P. cuspidatum is an amazing medicinal powerhouse of a plant but in the west mostly seen as a huge pain in the butt ; p
      I really like your weeds and herbs uses and the culinary offal and organ recipes that are so powerful n nutricious to mankind and yummie too I might add. Oldschool rules and never dies no!?
      Way to go bruv and I'm curious about the development of the book series.
      Thanx much for the succulent info and much Respect!
      P.

      Reply
    4.92 from 12 votes (3 ratings without comment)

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