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.
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) Recipe
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
Nutrition
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Do you eat liver? Love it? Hate it? Share below!
I PREFER TO USE LAMBS LIVER AS IT HAS NICE TEXTURE AND FLAVOUR.
So is it not good to eat beef liver. People say to eat calves liver. I have cooked up beefs liver and onions and the texture is hard to handle. I tried soaking it in milk for an hour and it was still hard to eat. Any suggestions
This recipe is delicious. I have never made liver and onions at home. Very simple to make and tasty. For me, the bacon is a must to help add flavor. Since I’m the only one who will eat this I have enough leftover for three more meals. Simply wonderful since I am AIP week 3.
I used to love my mum’s liver and bacon growing up. It had to be calves liver not beef liver. That is more tender and it is coated with flour. I now buy kosher calves liver and love it.
I’ve been dehydrating and encapsulating our liver from last years cow, but realized a cows liver is BIG! It will take forever to go through all those liver pills! You may have just sold me on trying liver and onions! Here goes nothin’!
Interesting about liver: When we lived in Amish country near Holmes County, Ohio. we bought our chicken off an amish farm where they were raised healthily, naturally. When they gave us the whole processed chickens they always presented with the liver, heart. etc. I would tell them to keep the organ meats because I did not use those parts. The farmer’s wife so wisely told us to compare the “baby’s tongue” color of their chicken livers against store bought ones. What a difference there was. I learned a lot from these fine folks.
You say to wash the liver but I have heard in the past it’s not safe to wash off meat because things can splash off of it onto the counter or other things and cross contamination can occur. Please elaborate, thank you!:)
If you are concerned by the splashing, you could bathe it in a dish filled with water…
no-wash is for chicken. Unless you have free range organic chicken, you might expect salmonella, thus the no-wash and cross-contamination caution. I have not heard anything about other meats requiring precaution, but you could google or check with USDA. But even with grocery store chicken, you could be careful, using the filled sink, no splashing.
What are some nice sides to go with this? (No potatoes or grain)
tried it today with almond flour i/o coconut flour. So so yummy, my 2 year olds loves it 🙂
Hi Katie,
First of all I LOVE your site. I am trying to help my family turn over to a healthy lifestyle. Still hitting some resistance (picky husband) but I would like to know if it is safe to give my baby some liver. She will be ready for some puréed food soon. The plan is to start with avocado, bone broths, and sweet potatoes. Is liver an ok choice too? Thanks!
Yes! It’s very rich, but it is also very good!
my grandma added cooking sherry and a pinch of brown sugar and 2 cloves of garlic to this onion bacon liver dish. if any was leftover it was ground into a pate for crackers. you can use this recipe for chicken liver pate also yum