A note for US readers: faggots in the UK are a meatball made from liver. There are two distinct types: faggots without sauce sold by butchers, and faggots with sauce, usually made in factories. I’d just finished the two recipes linked when I posted this.

Originally posted in 2009

There are only so many faggots a man can take. So what’s different that you can do with the masses of pork liver from your half pig? Liver Pâté is the obvious one, but it’s taken me ages to find a recipe that isn’t just too… well, just too ‘livery’.

This recipe is a slightly amended version of the one from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, and is the best that I’ve found so far. The one I formulated myself was too strong in the liver department and too bitter. In my notes, I wrote, “add breadcrumbs/rusk, add milk product”; that’s exactly what the one in ‘Charcuterie’ does.

Ingredients

1 lb/450 gms pork liver, cut into large chunks
1 lb/450 gms boneless pork shoulder, diced
1 ounce/25 gms (about 2 tablespoons) salt
1 tsp/3 gms freshly ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2 Tbsp/30 ml vegetable oil
¼ cup/50 gms chopped shallots
2 Tbsp/30 ml brandy
2 slices white bread, crusts removed and roughly chopped
½ cup/120 ml whole milk
¼ cup/60 ml double cream.
2 large eggs
1 Tbsp/6 gms chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
¼ tsp/0.5 gm ground white pepper
½ tsp/1 gm freshly grated nutmeg

Method

1. Put the meats in separate bowls with half the salt, pepper, thyme and bay in each; mix and marinate separately for 8 hours or overnight.
2. In a frying pan, sear the liver in the oil until brown; add the shallots and cook until translucent; add the brandy, cook off the alcohol, scrape all the bits off the bottom of the pan and put in a bowl to cool in the fridge.
3. Mix the bread, milk, cream and eggs well and set aside.
4. Keeping everything very cold, mince/grind everything except the bay and thyme (which can be thrown away) through the fine plate of your mincer/grinder. (Watch out as the liver has a tendency to squirt through the mixer plate!)
4. If you want an even finer pâté, put the lot in the freezer with your food processor bowl for 20 minutes or so. Then process until very fine. Check the temperature with a thermometer regularly – don’t let it exceed 15°C. Food processors heat food very quickly, so watch out – or omit this step.
5. Line a mould with cling film, greaseproof paper, or baking parchment and fill it, pushing the mix into the corners. Cover the pâté with the chosen lining and then with foil.
6. Put in a bain-marie (roasting tin of hot water) in the oven at 150°C, 300°C, gas mark 2; test with a thermometer after about 1-1½ hours – remove when it’s been above 65°C for 10 minutes.
7. Put weights on top of the pâté and cool.

Try some of our other offal/variety meat recipes:

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