I was futzing around the restaurant commissary trying to think up some new dishes and decided to experiment with some chicken livers and “chorizong hubad” or naked sausage meat. Clean approximately 400 grams of chicken livers by removing any connective tissues and soak in milk for a couple of hours, while resting in the fridge. Drain the livers well and blot them with kitchen paper towels to dry them well. Season with salt and pepper.
Put a cast iron or heavy skillet on the stove over medium high heat. Add a teeny bit of lard or vegetable oil (the former is preferable) and a tablespoon of minced garlic, some minced chilies if you like it spicy, then a minute later add some 150-200 grams of good chorizo meat, casings discarded. Let this cook until it has rendered a lot of its oil and is starting to brown and crisp up. Remove the chorizo meat and put the pan back on the stove and medium high flames. Add the chicken livers and just brown them on all sides, aiming for an interior that is slightly pink. I know, I know, most pinoys don’t like their liver pink, but they taste better that way and they have a soft tender texture that way, not like chewing large monggol erasers. This will take just a couple of minutes or so, depending on how hot your pan/flames are. Just aim for an internal temperature of 72-75C and you should be plenty safe.
Add the chorizo meat back in, douse with 1/4 cup or so of lechon or pork broth with a bit of cornstarch and soy sauce to create a little sauce, season with salt and pepper to taste, and plonk into a sizzling plate if you have it and serve immediately. The results? Slam dunk the first time around! It was so good, the crew lapped it up so quickly we had to cook another batch. Thankfully, it only takes a few minutes to prepare. And yes, they all surprised themselves by eating slightly “pink” livers. :)
12 Responses
Wow! I’ll try making this over the weekend! Looks like an excellent bar chow.
laughing out loud over “not like chewing large monggol erasers”…
Sounds delish! Moons ago, I used to cook fegattini pasta…spaghetti noodles with chicken liver. I imagine it will taste great too with hubad na chorizo.
corrine, yup, with a raw egg mixed in with hot noodles, a kind of local carbonara as it were… gotta try that next week. :)
This sounds amazing. Will definitely ask our cook to try it out to deviate from our usual chicken liver adobo.
Yum! Will have to try this next chance I get.
I went through an organ meat phase around two months ago.
Aside from chicken livers, tried beef and pork livers, pork kidneys, and pork brain.
Was not successful with the pork brain. The chinese grocery where I shop at also has pig uterus but I haven’t found the time to try cooking that.
From my experience, chicken livers were the easiest to prep; the grocery I buy them from already has them cleaned, they are the right size so no need to cut then up into smaller pieces, so the soaking in milk is the only prep-step.
The pork kidneys I tried tasted better than the livers but takes some effort to prep (have to cut it open to remove the inedible “urine sacs”).
Soaking in milk helps a lot to remove the off-tastes and I didn’t cook with chorizo but I imagine that would also help a lot more in masking the unique flavor of organ meats.
In Chinese cuisine/medicine, organ meats pack a lot of nutritional value. And there is the concept of eating the organ to treat problems with your organ.
So I imagine the liver treats would go especially well with a nice tall cold beer. :-)
It’s good that the FDA lowered their safe temperature for pork to 145 F or 63C rather than the 160F or 71C it was before. Pork loins at 160F tastes extremely dry and overcooked. I don’t know if they have made the same recommendations for chicken livers.
Hmmm, my two favorites (chorizo and liver!) in one dish is a must try… Thanks for this MM.
Like Millet, laughing loud about mongol and imagining if it was no. 2 or 4
MM, thanks for this. Did you use Spanish chorizos or native longganisa?
The taste buds are giving a standing ovation!
MM, this is a bit off topic (sorry!) by any chance, would you know where I can get liverwurst in Manila?