How To Cook With Liver in a Kosher Kitchen

Loaded with history and all anecdotal jokes aside, chopped liver is one of the quintessential Jewish dishes.   

Chopped liver is an Ashkenazi adaption of Foie Gras (goose liver). While Foie Gras is considered an expensive French delicacy, chopped liver doesn’t have quite the same cachet.  In fact many people think chopped liver along with gefilte fish and pickled herring are gross hold overs from our eastern Europeans ancestors.  

Yet, just like all nostalgic food, there are lots of people that love liver in all its forms.  The issue is, unless you can find prekashered liver, you have to kasher it before you can cook it.  

Our friends from Grow and Behold, know all about liver and they have shared their simple instructions on how to kashser liver at home.  They also sell pre-kashered liver if you prefer to buy it ready to cook. 

“Kosher laws prohibit eating blood. Livers, which are full of blood, can only be consumed after broiling. Utensils used to cook and livers should be marked for liver only and washed separately from other meat dishes.

• First, make slits or an X on one side of the liver, then rinse thoroughly.
• Sprinkle one side of the liver with coarse salt
• Place liver on broiler or grate, ensuring that the blood will be able to drain away during the broiling process
• Place grate under broiler or on grill with the salted side towards the flame.
• Once outside of liver is cooked (will turn rusty brown), sprinkle salt on uncooked side of liver and carefully flip to cook the other side.
• After other side is cooked, remove livers from flame and rinse thoroughly in cold water.

Liver is now KOSHER, hooray!”

We also have this video with more info and good visuals, watch below. 

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In addition to liver, other organ meats like hearts and spleen which are commonly sold at kosher butchers in Israel, must also be kashered specially before cooking.  According to Halacha Yomit in order to kasher chicken hearts follow these instructions: 

“Before the heart is salted, it must be torn open and the blood inside it must be washed off with water and only then may it be salted. Tearing the heart refers to cutting it at least once deep enough that it reaches all of the corridors of the heart along either its entire length or width. 

After doing so, one should salt the heart well by covering it with fine cooking salt on all sides and leave it in this matter for approximately an hour on top of a rack or other perforated utensil so that all the blood can drip out of it.

If one does not wish to salt the heart one may kosher it by grilling it (preferably, one should place a small amount of salt on the meat and only then grill it) since grilling also causes the blood to flow out of it and it will then be permissible for consumption. Even when wishes to kosher the heart by grilling it, one must tear it properly as we have explained above.”

Now that we know how to kasher them, let’s cook.