I first came across a recipe for chicken liver pate when I was working with Weezl on what is now Cheap Family Recipes. I recently made a BBC Good Food version of chicken liver pate that had lots of ingredients. Wondering how I could frugalise it, I stripped everything back to basics and made that the following week.
I preferred this version to the much more expensive BBC version! It is very smooth and slightly sweet from the slow cooked onions. I added a good splosh of Muscat, using up the remains from a very old bottle that had been lurking in the cupboard for years. This is possibly what made the parfait rather softer than I was imagining, but it was still easy to keep on my toast
Chicken liver pate or chicken liver parfait?
Wondering whether to call this a chicken liver pate or a chicken liver parfait, I looked up parfait and found that it is described as a very smooth and rich pate. So chicken liver parfait it is. Parfait sounds more luxurious and more expensive too!
It is very simple to make, not taking very long at all. You really need to whizz it with a stick blender or processor to get a richly smooth finish. If you don’t have either, cook the livers through as in the recipe, then fish them out and give them a good old chop on a board. You won’t get the super smoothness of a parfait, but you will get an extremely tasty pate
How to make chicken liver parfait
- Peel and chop the onions
- Gently saute the onions until cooked through
- Add the chicken liver
- Cook the onion and liver mixture until the liver is cooked through with no pink parts remaining
- Add the remaining butter and melt
- Add the pepper
- Now you need to blitz the mixture. Use a stick blender or a food processor. Blitz until very smooth
- Store the parfait in small containers, freezing any you won’t use in the next 2 or 3 days
How much chicken liver parfait does this recipe make?
- I potted my finished chicken liver parfait into ramekins and made 10 x 2 person portions.
What changes can I make?
- Adding lots of onions to the recipe makes the liver go further, although it is the butter that is the most expensive ingredient. So you can adjust things to suit.
- Reduce the butter by half, cut the onions down by half or leave them out altogether.
- Add some (lots of?) garlic, some very finely chopped rosemary, sage or thyme.
- Add more pepper if you like it peppery.
- Use a different vegetable, other than onion, or frozen mixed vegetables.
- You could use a small onion and a big squirt of tomato puree.
- Or add a big dollop of miso, I like the creamy white version best.
- Or cook some mushrooms well to remove most of the water and use those.
- Change the liver to calves, pig or ox. All will give a different flavour
- Add a good splash of something alcoholic, sherry, port, whisky or wine for instance, a couple of eggcup would be about the right amount. Too much will make the parfait too soft.
- Add a couple of tablespoons of grainy mustard, or Dijon
- Or use anything else you think you’d like
The quantities are to use a whole 400g package of chicken livers for convenience, so if you don’t want that much parfait, or your pack is of a different size, adjust the recipe quantities accordingly. The recipe was repriced in April 2024 and Tesco no longer sell chicken livers, nor do Aldi. So I’ve priced it at Sainsbury’s who sell chicken livers in 400g packs at £1.50, but also frozen ones in 250g packs at 75p. You can either reduce the quantity to fit the 250g, or increase to two packs of 500g, in which case I would leave everything else the same and you’ll get an extra 100g of parfait for the same price as using fresh ones.
Fresh livers are in 400g packs
The pate on cheap family recipes is a pig liver one which I really like. Although I do tend to use butter rather than oil when making it nowadays
Instructions
- Peel and chop the onions 400 g onions400 g onions
- Melt a generous knob of butter in a saucepan and add the onions
- Gently saute the onions until cooked through
- Add the chicken liver 400 g chicken liver400 g chicken liver
- Cook the onion and liver mixture until the liver is cooked through with no pink parts remaining. Do not overcook or the livers will toughen.
- Add the remaining butter and melt 250 g butter250 g butter
- Add the pepper 1 tsp black pepper1 tsp black pepper
- Now you need to blitz the mixture. Use a stick blender or a food processor. Blitz until very smooth
- Store the parfait in small containers, freezing any you won't use in the next 2 or 3 days
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