This liverwurst recipe is easy to do at home, and makes a great liverwurst for a charcuterie platter or sliced thin and added to a sandwich.
To make, you'll need a few kitchen items like:
Immersion circulator or sous vide (suggested, but not required)
And as far as ingredients go, you'll need:
Pork liver (fresh or freshly frozen)
Ground pork (I recommend a it be 70% meat, 30% fat)
White onion
Coriander
Long black pepper
Red chili flake
Dehydrated milk powder
Liquid smoke
Kosher salt
Baking Soda
You'll also need some kind of casing. For this recipe, I recommend this 76mm clear fibrous casing that you can get off Amazon.
NOTE: I calculate and measure out all my recipes using kilos and grams. It makes things a lot easier if you want to scale a recipe up or down. I highly recommend getting a gram scale for this.
Alright, let's get going. First, let's get a few prep items out of the way.
Chop and caramelize 300g of white onion. You don't need to caramelize them, but I find that it gives a better flavor and a thicker texture this way.
For the liver and pork, you'll want to make sure both are ground beforehand. You'll need about 660g of fresh or freshly frozen pork liver, and 330g of ground pork (again 70% meat, 30% fat ratio).
Alright, let's get to mixing. First, you're going to add to the food processor the ground pork, 18g kosher salt, 2.5g sodium nitrite (aka pink salt), and 3g baking soda. Mix on the puree setting for about 2 minutes or until it looks stiff and bound well together.
Then you'll add in the liver. Blend for about 2 minutes, or until everything looks like a smooth paste. Note: Throughout the blending process, make sure you scrape down the sides with a spatula to make sure all the ingredients are well incorporated.
Next, add the caramelized onions, 2g coriander, 3g ground long black pepper, 2g red chili flake, 15g dehydrated milk powder, and 2g liquid smoke. Blend until you have a nice consistent paste.
After all the ingredients are blended together, it's time to get to stuffing! As you put the mixture into the sausage stuffer, make sure to smooth out the paste to try to get out as many air bubbles as possible.
I also like to rinse out the casing with cold water before stuffing to hydrate it a little bit. Then, you can feed the casing onto the stuffing tube. (Note: I would use the largest stuffing tube you have for this project.)
I close my fingers about 90% of the way around the end of the casing to allow some give as I'm stuffing the sausage. If you grip it too tight, it will make the mixture back up around the tube, and we definitely don't want any of that deliciousness to go to waste! Once you get the right tightness (and it may take some practice if you're new to stuffing), the casing should fill up quite nicely.
Once stuffed, you'll need to tie off the open end. I've always got some butcher's twine handy exactly for this purpose! You'll want to wrap the twine around the end a few times, and make a tight knot. After trimming the excess casing, I like to fold the end over and tie it off again. This is called a "bubble knot," and will make sure the tie doesn't come undone during cooking.
Now you have a beautiful liverwurst chub. Before cooking, it's important to let it rest in the refrigerator overnight to allow the salts and flavors to meld together.
After it has rested, it's time to cook. I like to use an immersion circulator or sous vide because it will gently cook the liverwurst and give you the most out of your product as far as yield goes. Place the liverwurst chub in a food grade plastic bag and into the water, and let it cook at 145°F for 4 hours.
If you don't have an immersion circulator or sous vide capabilities, you can turn the oven on at 175°F and place the liverwurst chub in a water bath until the internal temperature reaches 145°F, which will probably take around 2 hours if the water bath is preheated.
After the internal temperature has hit 145°F, pull it out of the water bath and allow to cool again overnight in the refrigerator. Once it's nice and cool, you're ready to cut and enjoy!
Please let me know if you have any questions or comments!
Happy Butchering, Matt the Butcher.
