I’m so excited! I went to our local butcher for some pork cutlets (we make delicious pork cutlet chaffles). While he was doing whatever he does to make them a cutlet, I was looking at the cheese/lunch meat counter. I saw Liver Cheese…what the heck is that? I asked.
*ingredients are pork liver , pork, pork fat and salt.
It’s wrapped in pork fat. He gave me a sample… WOW! Where has this been all my life!!!
Does anyone else eat Liver Cheese?
PS: I tried attach a photo but it was too large.
It’s a kind of paté, and the word “cheese” actually means “something pressed.” We are most accustomed to thinking of cheeses in the context of dairy, but “head cheese” is a sausage/paté made from brains, etc.
Yes, exactly right! Have you had any?
I’ve also had Head Cheese made by my late grandfather-in-law.
Alas, that sort of thing is not readily available in my area. Also, since an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth mad cow disease in the U.S. a couple of decades ago, brain was largely taken off the market.
Never heard of it, sorry.
I love paté myself, and I have even enjoyed Foie Gras in a restaurant (abroad in Europe), but I do disagree with the practice that leads to that liver produce. I think it’s cruel.
Paté is great though. Especially with mushrooms in the mix. Yum!
I would definitely eat that.
You can get brain, but not of cows. And you have to find locations to get it. (This is in the US.)
I thought brain was taken off due to mad cow?
Whoops! You are right; I’ve edited my post.
That’s debatable, and the authorities are not likely to take the risk. The problem is that the prions that cause the disease are invulnerable to cooking, and there is no other known way of breaking them down, either.
There are prion diseases in people (such as Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease) that are unrelated to mad cow disease, and they really don’t seem to know much about how they are transmitted. Some cases appear to have resulted from infection, while others appear to be genetic.
Since prion diseases are invariably fatal within a year from the onset of symptoms, preventing any possible transmission is important. Mad cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) prions are transmissible to people, so the reluctance of the authorities to take any risks is understandable.
The problem is improperly folded neuronal proteins. Even the U.S. CDC Web site is not clear whether the “prion” is the mis-folded protein or the agent (about which the site is remarkably unspecific) that causes it to fold improperly (proper folding is required for proteins to do their job correctly). It would appear that not much is known about the aetiology of this sort of disease.
Okay, I just went down one of those internet black holes investigating the difference between liverwurst, braunschweiger, and liver cheese.
Apparently, there are no rules for mashing pork bits into “sausage” except that braunschweiger is usually smoked, liverwurst tends to have bacon added for flavor, and liver cheese is square and has onions. Now, I’m torn.
Lookin’ for a smoked, onion-laced, bacon-y liver slab, because goals.
Make your own?
I’ve always wanted to try it, just need to get the time.
Not sure how to smoke it though. I can only “hot smoke”, which is basically “cook using smoke and charcoal”. Maybe that’s possible?