Elk Liver

I remember my mom and dad making liver and onions when i was a child and I didn't like it. I'm nervous to try it again, but also feel like I'm not doing the elk justice until i actually give it a shot. So on my next elk I will try it. Hopefully I wont regret packing it out.
In the mean time grab some liver & onions from a restaurant so you have something to compare it to. IMO the Elk liver & onions we've made far exceeds what I've had from restaurants.
 
Made liver pate for a gathering of Copenhagen chewing redneck friends a few years ago. Buck liver, fried in bacon grease, some onion, heavy cream, spices, salt and pepper, food processed till smooth then cooled off in a small bowl. Served it up as “dip” with crackers and sourdough slices. That liver was the first dish we ran out of. Inhaled by a bunch of Okies that “hate liver.”
 
Liver and heart are the two best parts of a moose, and there's a lot of eating just from one animal when you take them. Makes me hungry just thinking about it.
 
I used to hate these things a while back and think about how and why people even eat things like that. But as you said you can’t know what you’re missing until you actually try it. So once my friend introduced me to it I realized how great these are. The liver and heart both taste delicious if you know the right way to cook them.
 
My mother fed me liver and heart from our game until I was about 20-21. Liver was tolerable fresh but degraded over time in the freezer.

She always made stuffed heart. I would place it in the class as gizzards. Tough and chewy. When I got old enough I just didn't bring it in anymore.

I brought in tongue once and it tasted just like beef tongue and was always good - about twice a year. However my wife was brought up on pickeled toungue and blood sausage so that was the end of that.

In a nutshell -- guts are guts . Leave them in the woods. When my Dad died I threw out at least 30 hearts and livers we found at the bottom of the freezer.
 
I killed an elk one evening, set the liver on a log to cool, came back in the morning to pack it out and there was just some bear claw and teeth marks where the liver once sat!
 
I just ground up 150lbs of sausage.

I ended up thawing my freezer out and finding Deer, Elk, Antelope, prime beef fat, liver and heart. I bought some pork fat. I used 3 livers and ground them into the sausage around .6oz-.07oz per pound.

I cannot taste the liver.
 
Prolly the same bear that stole my frying pan and onions 😡
LoL!

I went bear hunting on Prince of Wales Island a couple of times and the first time out we were totally exhausted after hunting all day. Woke up under the lean to, dry and out of the rain, but horrified that there was still some bacon, onions and potatoes left in the frying pan from dinner the night before! I think the rain had been our friend that time around.
 
I always take liver and heart. When i was a kid the old timers I grew up with even ate the sweetbread ( pancreas ). Same guys that would fight you for shooting a squirrel in the head. They loved the brains. Me, not so much.
 
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