Well, I’ve been and visited a butcher who sells meat from their own 100% grassfed herds, beef, lamb and water buffalo. Well, today I only got ox liver, which costed just under £2 and minced lamb, was just £3.30, to try. But what I couldn’t believe is that their 100% grassfed farm meats from their own herds and from other local farms (free range pork and chicken) costed less than conventional grainfed meats in the supermarked. The ox liver I will cook with some of my pasture eggs I’ve decided, in plenty of grassfed butter. When I saw what liver actually looks like I’m a bit embarrassed to admit I balked, I thought it looked like a bag of blood. How anyone can eat it raw is beyond me. Do any of you do this? This is a whole new experience for me which I fully want to embrace, and I’ll be cooking some of the liver tonight. How exciting! They also sell free range chicken liver and their own grass fed lamb liver and ox tongue I think I saw was also a reasonable price and water buffalo burgers, so lots of good meats to try.
Buying organ meats for the first time
Did you never see liver? It’s very common here, hard to avoid seeing 
I saw carnivores in the carni thread eating raw liver. Ew. Double ew. I use at least 30 minutes on any liver that enters my body!
The looks of liver wouldn’t keep me from eating it raw, why would it? I love blood, maybe that’s why… But I never ate blood raw either except mine, of course. But that wasn’t nearly as good as fried blood. Today I have my blood nostalgy day… Mmm…
Oh tongue, that’s good
Water buffalo, that’s exotic to me. Bison as well, never ate it but people can order it in this country and the courir comes with a cold truck (whatever is that called)… It’s not cheap, of course.
Yay for you! “My” (I haven’t visited since ages…) butcher don’t even have beef but you probably read it from me already. He has chicken and pork, a few cuts and that’s it. Of course he has liver and heart, that’s very basic but that’s it for organs I think. Not a big variety but it’s a tiny town.
Hi Shinita, well I had my first liver, and … it was quite sweet.
I remember you described beef liver as sweet, but I wasn’t prepared for that sweetness at all, but I cooked it to perfection I think, on very low heat, in grassfed butter, just for a few seconds, I seared it on each side. Thank God I did some eggs with them, I remembered you wrote you paired liver with eggs, the eggs offset the sweetness of the liver which I on my plate cut very thinly into small cubes to be masked a bit better by the eggs. It’s an acquired taste, but my body is feeling good, so tomorrow I will try the ox liver together with some minced lamb, and maybe that will be a better combination, though eggs work too. I figure eating liver 3 days a week should be plenty, and must be healthy. Is there such a thing as too much liver, was it vitamin A toxicity?
Excellent, and surprising. 
Liver - this really varies from person to person. I grew up having it from time to time, and I like it, but pretty well done. The stuff I get is usually not very thick. A medium-hot frying pan with butter, and just a couple minutes on each side and it’s done. I don’t mind a little more of a ‘pink line’ in the middle that’s not as well done as the outsides, but still, the meat is cooked.
Raw liver - while I know rationally that it’s likely one of the most purely ‘nutritious’ things out there, there is just no way. 
Different family, culture, region where I grew up - who knows - maybe. But I think that ship has sailed for me.
Hi OldDoug, yes I was quite surprised. I cooked the ox liver very carefully, in grassfed butter and seared it gently on each side, it was definitely pink inside when I cut into it. The sweetness was … very interesting, but the eggs balanced it, and I think liver can work if paired with muscle meat or minced meat, I’ll try to pair it with my grassfed minced lamb tomorrow. As I’ve read about the health benefits of eating organs I’m pretty determined, but I’ll have to get a bit creative in how to mask that very sweet taste of the ox liver. I could never eat it raw in a million years no matter how powerfully nutritious it’s meant to be, but I’m quite happy to experiment with various other ways of eating it and figuring which foods go best with it. The butcher sold free range chicken liver too as well as grassfed lamb liver, I might try those next time and see if they are less sweet. I am very fond of salty meats, and I sprinkle my pink Himalayan rock salt on everything, I am just not used to the sweetness of liver. Does it vary from animal to animal? Also what are your thoughts on the possibility of getting vitamin A toxicity from eating too many organ meats? Is that even a thing?
There have been 2 documented cases of hypervitaminosis from cow’s liver. In both cases the people ate 650g of liver every day for at least a year. Essentially then, nothing to worry about. You are far more likely to create an imbalance with minerals than have too much vit A. Having said that, most people would recommend a few ounces a week at most on average, just to be on the safe side.
Sounds like you hit the jackpot. When trying some new food, I will always try and find the best recipe to make. I like to think this helps the odds of me liking it, especially liver. I try liver about every 5 years or so. Must be an acquired taste over time. My family and I love lamb chops, a rack of lamb, a leg of lamb, a lamb roast, but not minced lamb. It has a weird consistency. The odd thing with grass-fed beef is that you may not notice a difference in taste but it certainly is healthier for you.
I think that since it’s from ox liver - a natural source - the danger is either non-existent or so low as to be forgettable, unless one ate a truly huge amount. With supplements - yes, for fat-soluble compounds there can be “too much.” Certain seals and polar bears do have dangerous amounts of Vitamin A in their livers - (you could probably eat enough polar bear liver in one sitting to be fatal 
) which the Inuit who hunt them are aware of - but beef liver isn’t that way.
Grass-fed beef does have a “lot” of Vitamin A. There are separate calculations for retinol and Beta-carotene, since for 1 International Unit it takes twice as much retinol as Beta-Carotene. Grass-fed beef has ~3 to 4 times more retinol and ~4 to 5 times more Beta-carotene than grain-fed beef.
I agree with @Naghite - it would take some doing to eat so much beef liver as to be harmful. While 2 or 3 oz/~60-70 g of beef liver will give enough for one day (with no other sources of Vitamin A in the diet), I’ve eaten 1 lb/454g of beef liver twice a week, several times, never with any apparent side effects.
Vitamin A hyper vitaminosis can be a thing, but as others have said, it’s a response to extreme levels, I’m pretty sure you have nothing to worry about. During an Antarctic expedition in the early 1900s, explorers Mawson and Mertz were theorized to have been done in by vitamin a toxicity, as they were forced to eat their husky dogs, including the livers. 
I don’t know that this has ever been substantiated, though.
Never tried lamb liver but chicken liver isn’t sweet. More like bitter a tiny bit but I feel a lot of things a bit bitter, I am sensitive to bitterness. Very different from my first, sweet beef liver but no wonder, they are very different animals…
I can’t imagine why I would want to increase the nutritiousness, more like diminishing it severely, that would be good… I wouldn’t need to wait for so very long to eat liver again (I am not particularly worried, if I want liver, I eat liver but I still won’t overdo it when I am fine anyway). But maybe I would get bored of it that way. (Not if I used different animals 
And I usually get “unbored” when I wait a little, almost no matter what… Cake was the odd one, I got bored of it and after years, I still dislike it. I don’t think it will come back. And “cake” is a HUGE range of very different things though whatever I can make is smaller.)
It doesn’t matter how often you eat it, it’s the amount. Some people eat it almost every day, a tiny bit. While I inhale 400g in minutes sometimes.
But that’s a teaser… NO WAY I could do that in the foreseeable future without feeling super restricted. If I make liver, I eat 500g (in 2-3 days, usually, the first having the most, sometimes almost all. even in one sitting, it’s just a tiny part of a single meal!). And try to wait several days Good thing I love other organs…
I had times when I ate 500g per week (only chicken liver and that’s a bit too strong for me so I had just a little per meal, like 100g), now it’s lower but I definitely like liver (or the variety it offers) and can’t wait too long.
My current fav is pork liver. I NEVER knew it’s tender when cooked right. Everyone and their mom and even bufets made it hard and too bitter for me…? Even I messed it up for the first time. But now it is wonderful every time. I don’t even know what I do differently… And they totally lie (or are mistaken? or I have magic) when saying we shouldn’t salt it in the beginning. I salt it in the beginning and it’s perfectly tender for me (I don’t want extreme softness, it has firmness but it’s FAR from hard and chewy), even when it’s cold and days passed.
For how long? If I am in the mood, I can do things long term. See my 7 eggs a day since 10-something years and I don’t ever plan to stop… I could eat much more but I eat too much food already.
I am not the worrying type but one can overdo things naturally sometimes (oh I have read about the polar bear liver, good thing I have about zero chance for eating that but I am informed now anyway… but things can get mess up easier occasionally) and whenever I look at the nutrients in liver (it has so many and I look up different ones), I get a bit shocked, it’s crazy! Hopefully my body can handle continuous higher than my probable needs (not like I can have an idea about it but we humans aren’t so fragile, we surely function well enough with very different amounts) but eating way higher all the time… Maybe it wouldn’t be good…? As it’s fat soluble and it can go higher or higher… Or would my body just be “worse” at absorbing or something? As it’s not THAT crazy high as possible with supplements… I don’t know. But I better don’t eat liver galore. I would even get bored and there are so many even better things to eat!
IDK how much they had to eat but the liver is a very small part of an animal even if it’s a big liver. I easily can imagine someone half-living on liver…
As already mentioned, we do have to eat a lot of cow’s liver to get too much Vitamin A. As much as I enjoy liver, I don’t want it all that often.
It’s apparently much easier to overdose with bear liver—fatally so, or so I understand.
Hi everyone, thanks for your replies and output regarding the potential of vitamin toxicity from eating too much liver, I feel reassured by your replies, I am a liver novice, lol. But I bought from the grassfed butcher about 0.5kg ox liver, which appears to have been cut up and I think it was 4 pieces in there. I have no idea how many grams each piece, but figure if I just eat 1 piece daily, with my eggs, for my first meal (I generally only eat 2 meals these days) it shouldn’t at all get to toxic levels. I cooked it very lightly, seared it gently on all sides and left it pink inside. Texture I was also not prepared for, completely different than muscle meat, however when you cut it up very small on your plate and eat it with eggs, I found it to be a good and nourishing combination.
As to the sweetness, I am not so fond of sweetness these days. My raw honey which I take quarter of a teaspoon of every morning tastes way too sweet to me, but I believe it has health benefits, my SO came down with a really bad cold, I have caught it a lot milder with no real symptoms yet (touch wood!!!) and I put it down to my raw honey and raw milk consumption. I bought mangoes and cut one up today in nice little cubes, made a lovely sunny bowl.
Ate 1 little piece and that was enough. I found it too sweet, and my body didn’t sing. And there ends my fruit experiment, my body doesn’t appear to want it anymore. My body has changed so much on this WOE.
Anyway, I’m pretty stubborn so if something’s good for me, like liver, I make myself like it, and the same with the raw honey. I just get used to it. I will always give my body the last word if something is good, and it felt pretty good after I ate the ox liver. There was no aftertaste. Enjoyed a really nice deep sleep too.
Hi ffskier, yes I feel I found the jackpot too, a haven of nutritious 100% grassfed organ and muscle meats, locally sourced. As to organs such as the liver, I believe that’s the most nutritious of the organ meats? Definitely an acquired taste, but works with eggs. Never tried lamb mince, but I love the taste of lamb, it’s so wild and kind of earthy, I think. As to the texture, well I really like minced beef, so thought I’d give minced lamb a go as well, I shall make my own lamb patties/burgers. Next time I go to the butcher I’ll get the lamb liver I think, and some minced beef, and perhaps I’ll try their water buffalo.
Hi Bill. Unless you’re in the UK and living fairly near where I live or in the same county at least, the travel alone would probably not be worth it, unless you don’t have access to local farms and butchers where you are.
I live in West Sussex near Worthing… anywhere near you?
You could pm me the name of the butcher if it’s close and I’m happy to travel for decent food. .
Hi Bill. I looked up the distance from Worthing to the butcher and it’s 5 hr twenty min (277.0 mi) Is that a too long drive? Their meats are of both a super fresh and frozen variety, but if you have a cooller, I suppose such a drive wouldn’t be a problem, and obviously you’d want to buy worth your while? In bulk, if you’ve got a big freezer. Anyway the place is called Heskin Hall, it’s a long drive, but worth it if you haven’t got other similar options near you. We too do have to drive to it, but it’s worth it, I think. You could do a google search on Heskin Hall.
That’s honey for you 
It’s super sweet for every normal person I suppose but after our sweetness perception changes? It’s worse.
I ate lactose free mascarpone today. 2.5% carbs and it’s enough to make it very sweet!
(To think that glazed ham has several times more sugar… And WHY? My SO and I just can’t wrap our heads around such sweet meat since days! And that thing is as sweet as his sweets!)
But the tiny amount should help. I definitely can eat a quarter teaspoon of good honey. Very sweet but the best taste ever, I just wouldn’t want any more alone. And not every day…
But a good white wine with 10% sugar already feels like honey to me (a very special alcoholic one but the sweetness and good aroma are both there)…
By the way I bought raw milk today Quite sweet, just like the not raw one I opened a few days ago.
Try other livers, most aren’t sweet or not nearly as much as they have their strong liver flavor I can imagine you feeling the little sugar in all… But there are things to balance it out. When I tried beef liver, it was very very mild, without the usual strong liver flavor (that pork and chicken liver has) and the sweetness was very noticeable and it made the food a bit unbalanced. Still good but I would have bored of that sweetness very quickly.
0.5 kg is barely any, you can eat it up and nothing happens. Just don’t eat that amount too often but why would you?