Chicken liver pate, even prepared at home, is a tasty and healthy snack. Unfortunately, many people forget about its benefits. And in vain. After all, the dish contains only healthy fats, proteins and healing spices. Therefore, it must be included in a healthy diet, including when losing weight.
Classic recipe for pate with carrots and butter
This is the most traditional version of the dish in our country. You can do it in two ways: by boiling the liver and frying it along with vegetables.
The first method is much more useful. Since during the cooking process, all harmful compounds that are present in abundance in the liver of chickens that are fed incorrectly, for example, soy or fish meal, are removed from the liver. That is, precisely in this by-product, which is sold today in most of our stores.
1st method (cooking)
Ingredients:
- 500 g liver;
- 100-150 g butter;
- 1 medium-sized carrot;
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar (optional);
- 1-2 tablespoons of cognac (optional);
- salt, to taste;
- Bay leaf;
- a few peas of allspice;
- a small pinch of nutmeg.
- Boil the carrots separately in their skins or peeled.
- Fry the onion in butter until intensely golden brown.
- Wash the liver, cleanses it of excess fat and bile ducts. Place in a small saucepan and fill with water.
- Bring to a boil. We remove the foam. This will help save the offal from excess bitterness.
- After the foam is removed, add bay leaf and allspice. Cook for 10 minutes.
- We pass the boiled liver and carrots through a meat grinder. Or grind it in a blender. A matter of taste. In a blender the dish will be more tender. However, many people prefer the "country" pate from the meat grinder.
- When the liver and carrots are ground, add the remaining butter, cognac, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and fried onions.
- Mix well. If desired, add a little more chopped herbs, preferably parsley.
2nd method (stewing-frying)
Despite the fact that the method of preparing homemade pate described above is the simplest, some people are afraid that the dish may turn out to be too dietary. This is wrong. It turns out to be easy and useful for assimilation, but not at all “sick”.
However, those for whom the concept of “holiday pate” and “cooking” are incompatible things can prepare the same dish by jointly stewing, or frying, liver and vegetables.
Ingredients and their number is exactly the same as in the first option. With the exception of bay leaves and allspice peas. Since we don’t boil the liver, we don’t use them either.
- Three carrots on a grater.
- Fry the onion until light golden brown. Add grated carrots. Fry together for another 5 minutes.
- Add liver to vegetables. Fry or simmer, adding a little water, until the liver is ready.
- We pass everything together through a meat grinder or grind it in a blender.
- Add the rest of the ingredients. Mix.
The result is exactly the same dish as in the first version. Only all the toxins accumulated in it were not removed from the liver. And that's bad.
Almost all other recipes for chicken liver pate that are made at home can also be prepared in these two ways - by boiling the liver or frying it. The first method is more useful.
The second option can also be made useful if, before adding to vegetables, the liver is stewed separately with the addition of a small amount of water, and then this water is drained. But in essence it will also be digestion.
Pate with yogurt and tomato paste
Ingredients:
- 500 g liver;
- 60 g butter;
- 4 tbsp. spoons of cognac;
- 2 cloves of garlic;
- 4 tbsp. spoons of natural fat yogurt;
- 1 tbsp. spoon of tomato paste;
- salt, to taste.
Boil the liver. Or simmer in a frying pan in a small amount of water. And then drain all the resulting liquid. It is important. Never add the remaining ingredients at once. This way the pate will turn out to be both harmful and tasteless.
Heat the butter in a clean frying pan and add the liver, which has already undergone heat treatment, into it. Pour in cognac and simmer for 5 minutes.
Then take out the liver. And put finely chopped garlic, yogurt and tomato paste into the pan. Enjoy for 1-2 minutes.
In a blender we grind everything together - both the liver and the dressing from the frying pan. Salt to taste.
Homemade pate according to this recipe turns out to be unusually tender.
Recipe with mushrooms
Ingredients:
- 350 g liver;
- 200 g of mushrooms (usually champignons);
- 1 onion;
- 2 cloves of garlic;
- 2 sprigs fresh rosemary (optional);
- a little capers, to taste and optional;
- ¼ glass of dry white wine;
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice;
- salt to taste.
- Chicken pate with mushrooms is usually prepared the “second way”, that is, the liver is fried along with mushrooms, and then everything is stewed together in white wine.
- So, put finely chopped onion and chopped mushrooms in a frying pan in heated butter (or ghee). Fry for 5 minutes.
- Then add garlic and capers. Or just garlic. And fry for another 1 minute.
- Add liver. And optionally a sprig of rosemary. And fry everything together until done.
- Pour in white wine. Salt. And simmer until it evaporates completely.
- Grind the mixture in a meat grinder or blender. Add lemon juice and mix well again.
Option with bacon
Ingredients:
- 500 g chicken liver;
- 100-150 g bacon;
- 1 onion;
- salt, to taste;
- sprig of rosemary, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of cognac, 2 cloves of garlic - optional, one or all together - whatever you like.
Place the bacon in the pan and fry it. Remove from the pan and place chopped onion in its place. Fry until golden.
Boil or simmer the liver in water. Then add to the onion. If we use rosemary and garlic, then put them in the pan for 1-2 minutes.
Then grind everything together with the bacon in a blender or meat grinder. Salt to taste. Add cognac and stir again.
Spicy pate with lots of spices
Ingredients:
- 500 g offal;
- 100-150 g butter;
- 1 egg;
- 2 tbsp. spoons of apple cider vinegar;
- 1 tbsp. a spoonful of chopped fresh herbs, thyme (thyme) and parsley (if there are no fresh herbs, then 1 teaspoon each of dried herbs);
- 1.5 teaspoons of cumin;
- ½ tbsp. a spoonful of dried sweet paprika;
- 4-6 cloves of garlic;
- 2 chopped bay leaves;
- salt and black pepper, to taste.
- Boil the egg hard.
- Clamp the onion in butter until intensely golden.
- Boil the liver or add it directly to the raw onion.
- Even if the liver has been cooked, we still add it to the fried onions in the frying pan. We also put all the spices and chopped garlic there. Add apple cider vinegar. Simmer until the vinegar has evaporated - approximately 5 minutes.
- Transfer the entire mixture to a blender and grind. Add the remaining butter and hard-boiled egg and grind again. Salt and pepper to taste.
Cooking option with apple
Ingredients:
- 500 g liver;
- 100-150 g butter;
- 1 onion;
- 1 large apple (preferably green, Antonovka is best);
- ¼ glass of red wine;
- 2 tbsp. spoons of heavy cream for whipping (optional);
- salt, to taste;
- a pinch of hot pepper (optional).
- Fry the onion in butter until golden brown.
- Peel the apple, cut into small pieces and add to the onion. Fry everything together for another 4-5 minutes, and then transfer it to a blender bowl.
- Boil or stew the liver in a small amount of water. Place in blender bowl with apple and onion.
- Pour red wine into the frying pan. Evaporate to a volume of 2 tbsp. spoons. Transfer to a blender.
- Grind. Add the remaining butter and cream. Beat again. Salt and pepper to taste. Mix everything thoroughly again.
Recipe with nuts
Ingredients:
- 500 g liver;
- 100 g butter;
- 1 onion;
- ¾ glass of any dry wine;
- 1 cup nuts;
- ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley;
- 1 teaspoon of dry thyme (thyme);
- salt, to taste.
Most often, pistachios are used to prepare chicken liver pate at home. However, the dish also looks good with more affordable nuts, such as cashews. You can, as in, add walnuts.
Fry the onion in butter until golden brown.
Then transfer the mixture to the blender bowl. Add the remaining butter there and beat. Add salt, parsley and thyme. Beat again.
Grind the nuts separately. For example, in a coffee grinder. Add them to the pate. Mix.
These are the 7 most successful recipes for chicken liver pate, which are created at home. But that doesn't mean there aren't others.
It still exists! In fact, there are an infinite number of them, because you can always combine all the listed ingredients to your liking.
So nothing prevents you from preparing liver pate with both apple and carrots. Or with mushrooms and nuts. And if you are preparing a dish with bacon, then why not replace the rosemary with thyme? After all, imagination when preparing dishes of this type practically knows no bounds.
It can be served as a cold appetizer, or spread on a sandwich (a great alternative to sausage!), and it’s very easy to prepare and doesn’t take long.
This liver pate is tender, not spicy, and, if necessary, keeps well in the refrigerator for several days. Depending on your taste preferences, the amount of onions or carrots can be increased or decreased by about a third. The fat content of butter is your choice; we think 72% is quite enough. Yes, and you don’t have to worry about whether it’s fried or ready: while this chicken liver dish is in the frying pan, it’s simply guaranteed not to be fried.
Need to:
- Chicken liver – 600 grams
- Butter - approximately 100-150 grams (we will need about 50 grams for decoration, just for taste and the desired consistency, 100 is enough)
- Onions – 3 medium sized onions
- Carrots – 1 very large or 2 medium
- Vegetable oil - approximately 2-3 tablespoons
- Table salt – 1 level teaspoon
- Ground black pepper - to taste (about a quarter to half a teaspoon, “no heaping”, of course)
Preparation:
Rinse the chicken liver with cold water, let the water drain, remove the films (if any). At the same time, remove 100 grams of butter from the refrigerator so that it melts and becomes soft at room temperature.
Peel the onions and cut into thin half rings or quarter rings.
Wash the carrots, peel and “share” into very thin strips, or “shavings” (convenient with a knife for peeling vegetables) or as for carrots “Korean style”; in the end, you can simply grate them on a coarse grater.
Heat the vegetable oil in a deep frying pan, add the chopped onion and fry it until golden brown (at a high heat level).
Place chicken livers in a frying pan, mix them with onions and fry together for 5 minutes (do not reduce the heat!). During the frying process, you need to stir 1-2 times so that the liver is fried evenly on all sides.
When 5 minutes have passed, add salt and pepper to the liver and mix.
Place the carrots in the pan, mix them with the liver and onions.
Cover the frying pan with a lid, reduce the heat level to medium or low and fry for another 15 minutes (during this process, do not forget to lift the lid a couple of times and stir the contents of the frying pan).
When the specified time has passed, turn off the stove and let the dish cool to room temperature.
When everything has cooled down, grind the liver along with the carrots in a meat grinder until it becomes a pate. The design of meat grinders is different for everyone, so we note: if you have a mechanical meat grinder, it may be better to grind everything 2 times. Depending on the type of meat grinder, you can “pass” the fried liver with carrots and butter through it at the same time, or you can mix it with softened butter later (for us, for example, the second option turned out to be more convenient).
So, if you did not grind the butter at the same time as the liver, then mix the softened butter with the pate until smooth (faster, of course, with a mixer). Actually, after you do this, chicken liver pate I'm ready now. You can put it in a container with a lid, put it in the refrigerator and then spread it on sandwiches. All further actions are taken solely “for beauty” and the opportunity to serve the liver pate on the table in portions, for which we need to form something like a sausage (we are, of course, only talking about the shape).
We take a sheet of foil, place the pate on it as you see in the photo, and make a longitudinal “groove” at the top.
Chicken liver pate - general cooking principles
One of the simplest and most affordable homemade pates is chicken liver pate. The appetizer is quick and easy to prepare, and there are many options for preparing it. The classic recipe, which uses liver, onions, carrots, butter and seasonings, can always be varied with additional ingredients (for example, cheese). In addition, chicken liver pate can be prepared with just onions - without carrots. The appetizer goes well with aromatic herbs and spices, so you can safely experiment by adding certain seasonings. The principle of preparing pate is very simple: stew or boil the liver, then pass it through a meat grinder with stewed or boiled vegetables and butter.
Chicken liver pate - preparing food and utensils
To prepare chicken liver pate, you will need a saucepan, a frying pan, a bowl, a cutting board, a blender, a meat grinder and a container for the finished snack.
Before cooking, the liver must be washed, the films removed and cut into pieces. We thoroughly wash and chop vegetables and herbs. The butter needs to be melted or simply softened (depending on the recipe).
Chicken liver pate recipes:
Recipe 1: Chicken liver pate
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The classic recipe for chicken liver pate uses the liver itself, onions, carrots and seasonings. Oil gives the appetizer a delicate and creamy taste, while black pepper and bay leaf give it a subtle aroma and slight piquancy.
Required ingredients:
- Half a kilo of chicken liver;
- One onion;
- One carrot;
- Butter – 50 g;
- 2 bay leaves;
- Ground black pepper;
- Vegetable oil;
- Salt - to taste.
Cooking method:
Cut the onion into half rings, carrots into circles. We wash the liver and cut it into pieces. First, fry the onion in vegetable oil until golden brown, then add the carrots and liver. Pour the ingredients into a glass of water, add salt and two bay leaves. After boiling, reduce the heat, cover the pan with a lid, and leave to simmer for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and simmer for another 10 minutes so that the liquid evaporates. Place the contents of the frying pan in a deep bowl, add softened butter. Puree all ingredients with a blender. Serve chicken liver pate with rye or wheat bread.
Recipe 2: Chicken liver pate with lard
Another recipe for delicious homemade chicken liver pate. Here lard is used instead of butter, and it is fried along with all the other ingredients.
Required ingredients:
- A kilogram of chicken liver;
- 200 g lard;
- 2 carrots;
- Bulb;
- Salt;
- Ground black pepper.
Cooking method:
Remove the skin from the lard (if there is one) and cut the lard into cubes. Simmer the lard in a hot frying pan for two minutes (but do not fry). We wash the liver and cut it into pieces. Place the liver in the lard, cover the pan with a lid and simmer over low heat until half cooked. Chop the onion and carrots and add them to the liver with lard. Pepper, salt, add water if necessary. Simmer until fully cooked. Transfer the contents of the pan into a deep bowl and leave to cool. When the liver becomes moderately warm, but not cold, pass all the ingredients through a meat grinder (once or twice). To make the pate homogeneous, you can puree the mass with a blender. Transfer the chicken liver pate to a container and store in the refrigerator.
Recipe 3: Spicy Chicken Liver Pate
This chicken liver pate got its name for a reason. Dried horseradish, aromatic herbs, a mixture of peppers, mustard and cognac are used here. The appetizer turns out incredibly tasty and appetizing, but the most important thing is that it is easy to prepare.
Required ingredients:
- A kilogram of chicken liver;
- 300 g butter;
- Three eggs;
- 70-80 ml cognac;
- Two spoons of mustard;
- Dried horseradish;
- Pepper mixture;
- Salt - to taste;
- Aromatic herbs (marjoram and basil) - 50 g of fresh herbs or 8 g of dried.
Cooking method:
Boil the eggs hard and leave to cool. We wash the liver, cut it into pieces, and put it in a frying pan. Fry the liver with salt, dried horseradish and a mixture of peppers. As soon as the liver is browned, cover the pan with a lid and simmer until done. The liquid should evaporate, but you also shouldn’t dry out the liver. Leave the finished liver to cool. Grind the cooled liver through a meat grinder along with eggs, cognac and 100 g of butter. If necessary, scroll again. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining soft butter, mustard and chopped herbs. We take a plastic bag, cut it along the seam and lay it out on the table. Place foil on top. We lay out the liver mass on the foil in the form of a rectangle (thickness - 2 cm). Place the mustard-oil mixture in the middle of the liver mass (also in the form of a small rectangle). Wrap the roll, carefully removing the foil. Place the pate roll in the refrigerator for 3 hours.
Recipe 4: Chicken liver pate with cheese
A very simple, but at the same time incredibly tasty recipe for chicken liver pate with cheese. Cheese and butter give the appetizer a delicate creamy taste, while peppers and onions add pungency and piquancy.
Required ingredients:
- Half a kilo of chicken liver;
- 3 small onions;
- 150 g each of cheese and butter;
- Salt;
- Ground black pepper.
Cooking method:
Cut the onion into large half rings, the liver into pieces. Boil the liver and onions in salted water until fully cooked. Place the liver and onion in a colander and let the water drain. Pass the liver and onion through a meat grinder. Grate the cheese on a fine grater and melt the butter. Place the cheese and slightly cooled butter into the liver mass. Pepper and salt the pate to taste, mix thoroughly. Serve with rye bread.
Chicken liver pate - secrets and useful tips from the best chefs
— If the pate is a little dry, you can add a little cream or milk;
— The pate will become more piquant and aromatic if you add a little cognac to it;
— Usually the ingredients are processed once or twice through a meat grinder, but for a more uniform consistency, the pate should also be puréed with a blender.
Real chicken liver pate is tender and low in calories. But store-bought pate does not always meet high requirements: it usually contains a lot of preservatives, pork fat, and sometimes there is no chicken liver at all, which is replaced with cheaper products. Therefore, many housewives are interested in how to prepare chicken liver pate at home.
Types of chicken pate
You can prepare liver pate for breakfast, a snack for beer, or as a main course. With it you can make amazing snack rolls and other original dishes for the holiday table and for every day.
The main ingredients of liver pate are chicken liver, salt and butter. The housewife adds the remaining components to her taste. These can be onions, garlic, carrots, bay leaves, black or allspice, and offal.
How to make classic chicken liver pate?
First, you need to choose the right chicken liver, because the taste of the finished dish will depend on its quality.
The liver should be fresh, not weathered, preferably chilled. It should be dense and elastic, without inclusions of bile or veins.
- Before you start cooking, you can soak the liver in milk. So its taste will be more delicate, and its consistency will be softer.
- Boil or stew the liver until tender, about 20 minutes. It should not fall apart, and its juice should be completely clear. Allow the liver to cool.
- Do not salt the liver during cooking, otherwise it will become tough.
- Remove the butter from the refrigerator and let it soften slightly at room temperature.
- Puree the liver using a blender and place in a deep bowl.
- Take a mixer with whisk attachments. Add salt and butter to the liver and beat the pate like cream for a cake.
Snack pate recipe
If you want to prepare a snack pate, then you can add sautéed onions, garlic, celery, carrots, herbs and spices to the liver while blending with a blender.
The taste of this pate will be sharper. It goes perfectly with croutons and chips. You can also spread it on pita bread and roll it into a roll. You can add fresh cucumbers or green onions to the roll.
You can add hearts to the liver pate snack. This will make the dish denser and keep its shape. They can be used to decorate other dishes or fill baskets. The pate can be eaten with pancakes or stuffed into eggs.
How to properly store pate?
Chicken pate tastes best when freshly prepared. But, if you plan to eat it for several days, then for storage, place the pate in a glass container and put it in the refrigerator.
The pate spoils very quickly, so the volume of storage containers should correspond to the volume of the dish. You can also lubricate its surface with vegetable oil.
Today I will show two recipes for chicken liver pate, both with photos and step by step. The first one will be everyday and budget-friendly, which can be prepared at home quickly and easily. The second one is more expensive and takes longer to cook, but the pate turns out more tender and airy. I usually use it to prepare the filling for vol-au-vents for the holiday table.
Chicken liver pate with onions and carrots
It cooks very quickly. True, it flies away just as quickly. And, by the way, this healthy and, one might say, dietary dish is gobbled up by both cheeks even by the most ardent liver aficionados.
Ingredients:
- chicken liver – 500g;
- carrots – 1 piece;
- onion – 1 piece;
- sunflower oil – 2-3 tbsp;
- salt - to taste;
- butter – 200g.
How to make chicken liver pate at home:
- Preparing the liver. Of course, it is best to make a dish from chilled, but if you have frozen, then it must be completely thawed. To do this, take it out of the freezer the day before cooking, put it in a bowl and put it in the refrigerator compartment. In such conditions it will thaw gradually, which is better for it in particular and for meat products in general. You will need a bowl because water and blood will leak from the liver and need to be drained. For the same purpose, it is also best to place the cooled liver in a colander and let it sit for about 10 minutes. Then we sort it out, cutting off any possible fat and remnants of the bile ducts or pieces with stains of bile, which is bitter, so we don’t need it at all. Unlike beef or pork, you do not need to remove the film from chicken liver, it is thin and will not interfere.
- Then cut it into pieces. Usually cutting in half is enough. And for now we put it aside.
- Peel the carrots and onions and rinse with water. Carrots can be grated or cut into pieces. This is not important, since in the end it will all be ground, but grated carrots cook faster. Finely chop the onion with a knife.
- Heat sunflower oil in a frying pan. Fry vegetables until soft.
- Place the liver in the pan, stir and fry for 1 minute.
- Then pour 1/3 cup of boiling water, add salt and cook over moderate heat for 7-8 minutes, stirring frequently. Check the liver for readiness, if it’s not red inside, then you can safely turn it off. Usually this time is enough. If you cook longer, the product will become dry and tough.
- There are recipes where vegetables and liver are fried separately. I think this is unnecessary, since all this will later turn into pate, and cooking together saves a lot of time.
- Transfer the contents of the pan to a bowl and let cool slightly.
- Then we take it and punch it through everything thoroughly so that not a single piece remains. I use an immersion blender for this, but a blender with a bowl is also suitable. You can also put it through a meat grinder, but then you need to install a grill with the smallest holes, plus twist everything twice.
- Butter will give the pate the desired consistency and thickness. It needs to be added very softly. So now is the time to take it out of the refrigerator. While the pate cools, it will soften. You can’t add liver mass to warm, much less hot! The butter will melt and the snack will turn out liquid.
- You can mix it with a blender, but I’m usually too lazy to wash it a second time, so I use a fork to mix it.
- Place the prepared mixture into containers. This, by the way, can be an ordinary glass jar. Place in the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours. The main thing is not to start eating right now, when it’s not cold. Very tasty!
Chicken liver pate recipe with photos step by step
A special feature of this recipe is the addition of cream and cognac, with which the pate becomes very tender and aromatic. After adding cognac, we will bake the semi-finished product in the oven. The heating will evaporate the alcohol, but the aroma will remain.
Ingredients:
- chicken liver – 450g;
- onion – 1 piece;
- cream 10% - 100ml;
- butter – 100g;
- vegetable oil for frying;
- salt, ground black pepper - to taste;
- cognac – 1 tbsp.
How to prepare a delicious chicken liver pate at home:
The pate can be spread on bread, placed into vol-au-vents using a culinary syringe or cornet so that the liver pate looks beautiful in them, and served on any, even the most sophisticated, holiday table.