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Liver and Onions with bacon- a liver recipe you will like
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Liver and Onions (with Bacon)

Katie WellsApr 16, 2013Updated: Mar 29, 2020
Reading Time: 3 min

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Wellness Mama » Blog » Recipes » Liver and Onions (with Bacon)

It turns out that after all the childhood fear and drama about organ meats, they are actually good for you. If you aren’t already eating liver, you should be!

The objection I get most often (including from my mother-in-law) is that liver is the filter organ, so it contains toxins from the body and is bad for you. Liver is a filter of sorts, but that is hardly the whole story. As Mark’s Daily Apple elaborates:

To call the liver a simple filter is incorrect. If we want to maintain the metaphor, it’s more like a chemical processing plant. The liver receives shipments, determines what they contain, and reacts accordingly. It converts protein to glucose, converts glucose to glycogen, manufactures triglycerides, among many other tasks, but its best-known responsibility is to render toxins inert and shuttle them out to be expelled – usually in the urine via the kidney. It doesn’t just hang on to toxins, as if the liver is somehow separate from the body and immune to contamination. The liver is part of the body! If your liver contains large amounts of toxins, so do you!

Okay, so we’ve established that the liver is a processing plant by design, rather than a physical filter whose express purpose is to accumulate toxins, but what about animals raised in industrial, intensive operations? The liver from a pasture-raised cow with a perpetually cud-filled maw can undoubtedly handle its relatively light toxic load; the liver from a CAFO-cow feeding on grain and exposed to environmental pollutants is surely another matter entirely. Right? Sorta, although it’s more complicated than that.

(read the rest here)

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From my research, as long as the liver is from a healthy source, it is a powerhouse of nutrients. (Note: We get liver from Grassfed Traditions and US Wellness Meats)

Why eat liver? WAPF sums it up well:

“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”

It also blows any other “superfood” out of the water on nutrient comparison. Don’t believe me? Check out this post.

Convinced? If you are new to offal, I suggest an easy recipe like this one to help get over any *ick* factor:

Liver and Onions with bacon- a liver recipe you will like

Liver and Onions (with Bacon) Recipe

Katie Wells
An incredibly nutrient dense and delicious liver and onions recipe topped with bacon (because bacon just makes everything better).
4.08 from 14 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 10 mins
Cook Time 50 mins
Total Time 50 mins
Course Main
Cuisine Offal
Servings 4 people
Calories 363 kcal

Ingredients
  

  • 4 slices bacon
  • 1 lb beef liver (grass fed)
  • ⅓ cup coconut flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • 2 medium onions
  • 2 TBSP butter (or coconut oil)
  • 2 TBSP water

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 325°F.
  • Brown the bacon in a skillet and reserve drippings.
  • Wash the liver and slice into thin (¼ to ½ inch) slices.
  • Rinse well and pat dry.
  • In a medium size bowl, mix together the coconut flour, salt, garlic powder, and pepper.
  • Grease the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish with the bacon drippings.
  • Dredge the liver slices in the coconut flour mixture and place in the baking dish.
  • Thinly slice the onions into rings and layer on top of the liver slices.
  • Cut butter in to small pats and place over sliced onions.
  • Add the water to the pan to keep all moisture from cooking off.
  • Place the pan in the oven and cook at least 30-40 minutes or until well cooked and onions are soft. It may take up to an hour depending on the thickness of the liver slices.
  • While the liver is cooking, crumble or cut the bacon into little pieces.
  • Remove the liver from the oven, sprinkle with bacon pieces, and enjoy!

Notes

If desired, you can sprinkle the onions with additional spices before adding the butter.

Nutrition

Serving: 2slicesCalories: 363kcalCarbohydrates: 16gProtein: 28gFat: 20gSaturated Fat: 9gCholesterol: 341mgSodium: 880mgPotassium: 488mgFiber: 4gSugar: 3gVitamin A: 19340IUVitamin C: 5.5mgCalcium: 18mgIron: 6mg
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

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Do you eat liver? Love it? Hate it? Share below!

Category: Beef Recipes, Recipes

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About Katie Wells

Katie Wells, CTNC, MCHC, Founder of Wellness Mama and Wellnesse, has a background in research, journalism, and nutrition. As a wife and mom of six, she turned to research and took health into her own hands to find answers to her health problems. WellnessMama.com is the culmination of her thousands of hours of research and all posts are medically reviewed and verified by the Wellness Mama research team. Katie is also the author of the bestselling books The Wellness Mama Cookbook and The Wellness Mama 5-Step Lifestyle Detox.

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Reader Interactions

Discussion (34 Comments)

  1. Mimi

    June 19, 2014 at 9:31 AM

    HI, Thanks so much for sharing this recipe! I am at the beginning of transitioning to a real food diet, and am curious how you “hide” or incorporate liver into other meals and food? I’d like to add it to other foods like ground beef to boost more nutrition. Also, I’m so glad that you now have a podcast!

    Reply
    • Wellness Mama

      June 20, 2014 at 11:30 AM

      I have my butcher grind it with the regular ground beef so it’s all mixed together.

      Reply
  2. stacy

    May 16, 2014 at 8:47 PM

    I’ve NEVER understood why people are so squeamish about liver or other organ meats. It’s meat! It’s just another part of the same animal your ground meat and steak comes from. Seriously where does this pervasive ‘ickiness’ attitude come from? People react like you’re asking them to eat cow rectum, or a gigantic spider.

    If your mom cooked it badly when you were growing up, that I can understand, but to people who have never tried it at all? Live a little! Trying new foods won’t kill you!

    Reply
  3. Sharon

    April 24, 2014 at 1:02 PM

    Would this work with a pastured, organic grain fed pork liver?

    Reply
  4. Layla

    April 21, 2014 at 12:21 PM

    Is there a way to make this on the stove top? I want to make this tonight for supper, but all of the sides that I plan on making will be in the oven too. There just won’t be enough room.

    Reply
  5. Irene Tiger

    May 19, 2013 at 11:22 PM

    I’ve recently added liver and other organ meats to my diet, and the other day i had beef liver with barbecue sauce (I know, bad me, bad) and I actually enjoyed it

    Reply
    • sheila meadows

      December 13, 2015 at 7:12 PM

      5 stars
      The best liver is kosher calves liver. Never beef liver.

      Reply
  6. Louvelle Marie

    April 21, 2013 at 7:25 AM

    Yay thank you so much for this post Katie! I’m a big fan of eating liver, and liver with onions was a common dinner in my family. but my husband banned it from our table because of the whole “filter” fear. This is fantastic information to show him 🙂

    Reply
  7. Jennifer L.

    April 17, 2013 at 5:19 PM

    Is this a good recipe to introduce liver to a 15-month-old?

    Reply
    • Wellness Mama

      April 17, 2013 at 6:04 PM

      Yep… although kids usually handle it better than we do as adults so he could probably handle any way you make it 🙂

      Reply
  8. Juniper

    April 17, 2013 at 8:56 AM

    Thank you so much for this eye opening post, I was one that believed the liver was simply a filter. I don’t think I’ll be eating it any time soon LOL but at least now I’m more educated after reading your, easy to understand, analogy. Thanks Again!

    Reply
  9. kathy

    April 16, 2013 at 3:00 PM

    I have been making a vary similar variation of this recipe for a few years now. The difference is I do it in my cast iron on the stove. Cook the bacon, saute the onions in grease, remove the onions, brown both sides of the liver that has been heavily flour coated, (I use some extra coconut oil for browning),pour about 2 c. of water in the skillet, put back in the onions and crumbled bacon, put the lid on turn heat down some, cook for about 40 to 50 minutes. The liquid will thicken and you will have the most delicious gravy to go over the liver and whatever else you may like. We like mashed potatoes with it.

    Reply
    • mary

      March 9, 2015 at 2:45 PM

      5 stars
      I believe this is the recipe I’ve been searching for! How lucky. I’d like to make this tonight using your recipe. Fabulous. This is going to be my regular standby from now on.

      Reply
  10. Maria Sturtevant

    April 16, 2013 at 1:48 PM

    I’ve never
    minded liver especially when it’s cooked like this with bacon!

    Reply
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