• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

FORAGER | CHEF

Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

  • Home
  • About
  • Mushrooms
    • Mushroom Archive
    • Posts by Species
      • Other Mushrooms
        • Lobster Mushrooms
        • Huitlacoche
        • Shrimp of the Woods
        • Truffles
        • Morels
        • Shaggy Mane
        • Hericium
        • Puffball
      • Polypores
        • Hen of the Woods
        • Dryad Saddle
        • Chicken of The Woods
        • Cauliflowers
        • Ischnoderma
        • Beefsteak
      • Chanterelles
        • Black Trumpet
        • Hedgehogs
        • Yellowfeet
      • Gilled
        • Matsutake
        • Honey Mushrooms
        • Russula / Lactarius
          • Candy Caps
          • Saffron Milkcap
          • Indigo Milkcap
      • Boletes
        • Porcini
        • Leccinum
        • Slippery Jacks
    • Recipes
      • Fresh
      • Dried
      • Preserves
    • The Basics
  • Plants
    • Plant Archive
    • Leafy Green Recipes
      • Leafy Green Plant Varieties
    • Ramps and Onions
    • Wild Herbs and Spices
      • Spruce and Conifers
      • Pollen
      • Prickly Ash
      • Bergamot / Wild Oregano
      • Spicebush
      • Golpar / Cow Parsnip
      • Wild Carraway
    • Wild Fruit
      • Wild Plums
      • Highbush Cranberry
      • Wild Grapes
      • Rowanberries
      • Wild Cherries
      • Aronia
      • Nannyberry
      • Wild Blueberries
    • From The Garden
    • Nuts, Roots, Tubers and Grains
    • Stalks and Shoots
  • Meat
    • Four-Legged Animals
      • Venison
      • Small Game
    • Poultry
    • Fish/Seafood
    • Offal and Organ Meat Recipes
    • Charcuterie
  • Recipes
    • Pickles, Preserves, Etc
    • Fermentation
    • Condiments
    • Appetizers
    • Soup
    • Salad
    • Side Dishes
    • Entrees
    • Baking
    • Sweets
  • Video
    • Field, Forest Feast (The Wild Harvest)
    • Foraging Videos
    • Lamb and Goat Series
    • YouTube Tutorials
  • Press
    • Podcasts / Interviews
  • Work
    • Public Speaking
    • Charity and Private Dinners
    • Forays / Classes / Demos

Venison Liver Pate

Jump to Recipe Print Recipe
Venison liver pate recipe

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

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). 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 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

Venison liver pate recipe
Print Recipe
No ratings yet

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 mins
Cook Time30 mins
Purging time1 d
Course: Appetizer, Charcuterie
Cuisine: American, Italian
Keyword: Liver Pate, Venison liver
Servings: 8

Ingredients

  • 1 lb venison liver cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 1/2 tsp pink salt sodium nitrite
  • 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 tsp kosher salt plus more to taste
  • 1 tablespoon maple syrup
  • 1/3 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, along with 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.

Related

Previous Post: « Balsamic Blue Cheese Sauce for Venison, Game and Vegetables
Next Post: Sochan with Bacon and Tepary Beans »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




Primary Sidebar

2022 James Beard Nominee

beard award

Subscribe (It’s free)

ORDER THE BOOK

UPDATED OPTIONS FOR CA / EU / US the forager chefs book of flora by Chef Alan Bergo

Forager Chef

Forager Chef

Footer

Instagram

foragerchef

FORAGER | CHEF®
🍄🌱🍖
Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
2022 James Beard Nominee
Host: Field Forest Feast 👇
streaming on @tastemade

Alan Bergo
I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. You tak I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. 

You take the pure juice of the leaves, mix it with salt, Koji rice, and more chopped fresh ramp leaves, then ferment it for a bit. 

After the fermentation you put it into a dehydrator and cook it at 145-150 F for 30 days. 

The slow heat causes a Maillard/browning reaction over time. 

After 30 days you strain the liquid and bottle it. It’s the closest thing to plant-based fish sauce I’ve had yet. 

The potency of ramps is a pretty darn good approximation of the glutamates in meat. But you could prob make something similar with combinations of other alliums. 

The taste is crazy. I get toasted ramp, followed by mellow notes from the fermentation. Potent and delicate at the same time. 

I’ve been using it to make simple Japanese-style dipping sauces for tempura etc. 

Pics: 
2: Ramp juice 
3: Juicy leaf pulp 
4: Squeezing excess juice from the pulp
5: After 5 days at 145F 
6: After 30 days 
7: Straining through Muslin to finish

#ramps #veganfishsauce #experimentalfood #kojibuildscommunity #fermentation #foraging
Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Pepin used to make for French president Charles de Gaulle. 

You bake eggs in a ramekin with shrimp topped with creamy morel sauce and eat with toast points. 

Makes for a really special brunch or breakfast. Recipe’s on my site, but it’s even better to watch Jacques make it on you tube. 

#jacquespepin #morels #shrimp #morilles #brunchtime
Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each instead of the pound. 

Good day today, although my Twin Cities spots seem a full two weeks behind from the late spring. 2 hours south they were almost all mature. 

76 for me and 152 for the group. Check your spots, and good luck! 

#morels #murkels #mollymoochers #drylandfish #spongemushroom #theprecious
The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natu The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natural secretion of water I typically see with plants. 

I understand it as an indicator that the mushrooms are growing rapidly, and a byproduct of their metabolism speeding up. If you have some clarifications, chime in. 

Most people know it from Hydnellum 
peckii-another polypore. I’ve never seen it on pheasant backs before.

Morels are coming soon too. Mine were 1 inch tall yesterday in the Twin Cities. 

#guttation #mushroomhunting #cerioporussquamosus #pheasantback #naturesbeauty
Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a grocery store. 

#groceryshopping #sochan #rudbeckialaciniata #foraging
Italian wild food traditions are some of my favori Italian wild food traditions are some of my favorite. 

Case in point: preboggion, a mixture of wild plants, that, depending on the reference, should be made with 5-23 individual plants. 

Here’s a few mixtures I’ve made this spring, along with a reference from the Oxford companion to Italian food. 

The mixture should include some bitter greens (typically assorted asters) but the most important plant is probably borage. 

Making your own version is a good excercise. Here they’re wilted with garlic and oil, but there’s a bunch of traditional recipes the mixture is used in. 

Can you believe this got cut from my book?!

#preboggion #preboggiun #foraging #traditionalfoods
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Privacy

  • Privacy Policy

Affiliate Disclosure

 I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this website. Your purchases help keep this website free and help with the many costs involved with this site as it has continued to grow over the years. 

Copyright © 2022 ·