Silky-Smooth Chicken Liver Pâté
If you’ve only ever had chicken livers fried with onions or chopped up with hardboiled eggs, then it’s time to experience liver in a more decadent way. Not that Grandma’s chopped liver doesn’t hit the spot sometimes, but the smooth, whipped texture and buttery flavor of Chicken Liver Pâté is really something special.
The secret to silky, smooth pâté is twofold. First, simmering the liver in liquid instead of browning it prevents the liver from drying out while cooking. The second “secret” – and actually, this shouldn’t be a surprise, since we’re talking about French cuisine here – is butter. Lots and lots of butter. Some traditional French recipes call for so much butter that the end result is more like butter pâté with a little bit of chicken liver thrown in. Some recipes also add whole cream and many have a dash or two of Cognac or other liquor for good measure.
This recipe, which is based off one by the great French chef Jacques Pépin, uses a little bit more restraint and gives the chicken livers first billing. With less butter, the result is no less delicious. The liver flavor is slightly stronger but the texture is still perfectly smooth and creamy. If you want to add more butter, by all means, go for it. Either way, this chicken liver pâté is a perfect snack, one loaded with flavor as well as protein, vitamins and minerals. Eat it by the spoonful, or use the pâté as a dip for raw vegetables or Primal crackers.
Makes between 1/2 and 1 cup of pâté
Ingredients:
- 1/2 pound chicken livers
- 1 shallot, finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 3 to 6 tablespoons unsalted butter (at room temperature). For pâté that is very dense and buttery, add between 8 to 12 tablespoons of butter
Instructions:
Rinse the chicken livers and pat them dry. Cut off any white connective tissue.
In a saucepan, combine the chicken livers, shallot, garlic, bay leaf and salt. Add the water and bring to a simmer.
Cover, reduce the heat to low and simmer 3 to 5 minutes, stirring once. Turn off the heat and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes.
Discard the bay leaf. Drain the liquid out and transfer the livers, shallot and garlic to a food processor. Add nutmeg. Process just until the livers are finely chopped, then, with the blade still running, start adding the butter 1 tablespoon at a time.
Once the butter is blended in, season with salt and pepper then continue to process until the pâté is completely smooth.
Scoop the pâté into one large or two small ramekins or bowls. Decorate the top with fresh herbs if you like. Cover with plastic wrap pressed down onto the pâté (to protect it from air) or pour melted butter on top, creating an edible seal (when melting the butter, skim as much white foam off the top as possible).
Refrigerate 4 to 6 hours or overnight so the pâté firms up. The pâté will stay fresh up to 1 week.
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Posted By: Worker Bee
Can you use beef liver for this?
I don’t see why not
I would encourage everyone who hates liver to give this a try. I dry retch when I eat beef liver, but have been eating shop bought chicken liver pate for years. It is absolutely delicious – my favourite is cracked pepper flavour,
I should try making my own. But this doesn’t taste like liver, thats for sure. Love it with celery and carrots as a dip (with some nice cheese too)
Do you have any suggestions for what to eat it with other than raw veggies? I can’t eat anything raw ):
Definitely NOT my (kosher) grandma’s chopped liver.
My grandma’s chopped liver was the best. She always sauteed onions in chicken fat (schmaltz) and ground it along with the liver (in those days before food processors she used a hand cranked meat grinder that clamped to the kitchen table). Heaven, and we stopped eating it because we thought it was so bad for us. Ha!
She made egg salad the same way–sauteed onions in schmaltz (unless the eggs were served at a dairy meal) and mixed it in with the eggs–she didn’t know from mayonnaise. This was so yummy!
As a little kid, I called it “chocolate liver (chopped liver) and vanilla liver (egg salad)”. Yum!
It feels great to be able to reconnect to my grandma’s style of food for the health of it.
I will need to try something like this… I just (like as in I’m eating it right now) made beef liver with some stewed tomatoes and mushrooms and eggplant and I might just *accidentally* forget to eat the leftovers. :/ My first time trying liver, it’s just hard for me mentally even though I think I like the taste… I really want to eat it though because it’s so cheap and healthy. Maybe this will help.
hate liver, LOVE pate. Go figure!
I’m going to try this recipe as soon as I can get the livers. I love any kind of liver, but my husband detests it, especially chicken liver. When I buy chicken liver, I usually just bake it in the oven until just done, eat what I want, and share with the dog. She loves it. But if the pate is as good as it sounds, she won’t get a bit of it. (Well, I’ll save a few livers for her for a snack.)
What about the bacon? Chicken liver pate without bacon? The way we do it we get two meals from one – we start out making Chicken Livers & Bacon for dinner (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV7XzJq_BBo) and the blend up the leftovers to make pate for the next few days. We eat the livers on Napa Cabbage and the pate on carrots, cucumbers of raw sprouted seed crackers we buy at out local health food store.
Hmm, I love chicken livers! I am sure going to try this
This looks delicious, I cannot wait to try this!
I’ve always despised liver. My mother and brother used to share in their enjoyment of liverwurst as I grew up, and I always just scrunched my nose at it… However, with a slight case of NAFLD from being horribly underweight, I’ve read enough around the ‘unconventional health’-osphere to know the importance of choline… which is in highest concentrations in offal and eggs! SO this came at a perfect time; I’d had chicken livers sitting untouched in my freezer for a week. I made this yesterday and enjoyed it atop banh mi-like ingredients as a salad. Deeelicious! Never thought I could like liver!
This looks fantastic! My husband won’t eat it, but I can share with my dog and cats. Now what can I spread it on? I don’t really care for vegetables and pate.
Dear Mark, I don’t eat liver, ever, for any reason…… Wait, that was liver???? This was so good I gobbled it up. Not only that but so did my toddler. Thank you so much for this great recipe. I can’t tell you how much your website has helped my family. We have WWMD (What Would Mark Do) discussions often and it always gets us thinking in the healthiest direction. I have gotten the body of my dreams and come to think of it, I really should send you some before and after pictures. Thank you again. Keep up the amazing work you do! You are a good person. All my love, Leelan
Hi!
Can I use goose fat instead of butter? Or it won’t taste as good as butter? Its bacause of kosher food and stuff..
thanks guys
I made this on Friday and ate the last of it today (with a spoon, I might add). So yummy!
Thanks alot! I have been going primal for about two months now (got both your blueprint and cookbook) and have been looking for a way to enjoy liver. I have always hated liver except in our traditional Swedish liverpate. The only problem is that the store bought stuff has all these nasty things in it.
Anyway I tried this out today and it tastes fantastic. A lot better than the store bought stuff.
Actually I’m eating it right now with sticks of carrot and cucumber… Fantastic!!
I made some last night, it was a great idea! But wondering if anyone has tried it with something other than butter? solidified fat or something?
I made this last night, it was great! I normally hate liver but I remember my mother making pate years ago like that, so I thought I would give it a try. I’m so glad I did, it was very smooth with a mild liver flavor. I used freshly ground nutmeg, three times the garlic (it still didn’t taste garlicie to me), and a Vidalia onion instead of the shallot. It was wonderful. My wife can’t quit talking about it.
Yummy pâté. A great snack, especially for a new mum with little time to prep food. I need grab and go and this fits the bill.
Great recipe! My first attempt at cooking any kind of liver as I always hated it as a kid. It turned out wonderfully and we ate it all!
I don’t use toast but I do use it spread on raw vegetables. I also spread it on those roasted dried seaweed sheets and roll them up for little snacks.
I have a very similar recipe I got from an elderly Brazilian couple who made a batch of pâté once a week. They spread it on their toast every morning and said they’d been eating it for breakfast for several decades, but I never had the courage to try it.
Adding a small quantity of dessert wine (Port, etc.) helps with the flavor. What about using aspic (cleat gelatin) to seal the pate. This is what I have always seen on store bought pate and terrine. It doesn’t last long enough to preserve it when I make it at home.
Tried this recipe – and it was absolutely amazing. Incredibly popular at the dinner I attended, and disappeared in minutes!
Wonder if you could do something like this recipe with beef heart instead of liver? Anyone tried?
Am going to shop now for my second shot at the at the chicken liver pate. Will do the butter thing.
( and some dry sherry)
I need some ideas on how to serve this as an appetizer. Any primal way of spreading it on crackers or thinly sliced bread? I love all pate and am used to it like this but would love to try something else. Any ideas?
Thank you for this.. i use to work at a B&B years ago and the french chef always made this but when no one was around.. it was my favorite to eat in the morning before the rush.. here’s to hopping i can make this like Jean Louie!
*hoping
Made this today. Sorry but found it very bland. I added bacon and mushrooms to the recipe to try for more flavour as I thought it would need more oomph but that didn’t work. I landed up adding port, and Worcester sauce which worked quite nicely.
Made this just now, didnt have shallot so used onion. Also didnt have nutmeg so I omitted. It tastes fantastic! Put it int the fridge can’t wait to have it cold with veggies!
Ooohh I love chicken liver pate with bacon. My 4 yr old also loves it, I wonder if we’ll like it the same if I make it myself as there is only one brand that I really like.
I made this recipe today with a few minor tweaks and it came out fantastic – it tastes like the delicious German liver wurst I grew up on, but was never able to find an equivalent to after moving to the US. I made the follow tweaks:
- I sautéed the onion (I didn’t have shallots on-hand) and garlic in butter with a dash of red pepper flakes, and maybe 1/2 a tsp of dried thyme (note: I made a double batch since I could only find 1lb. tubs of chicken livers at my local Whole Foods)
- then I deglazed the pan with some brandy before adding chicken stock, bay leaves and then the livers to simmer as the recipe says
- I followed the directions from there and added 16 Tbsp of salted organic butter (didn’t have unsalted & forgot to buy it) as I processed everything
- I took the advice of some of the other posters and ran the whole mixture through a mess strainer to catch any connective tissue I missed when prepping the livers
I will be having some spread on celery sticks tomorrow, but couldn’t wait until then – I just tasted it, LOVED it and had to share! =)