Meatballs with mushrooms and liver

Funny thing: after making my meatballs with mushrooms and liver, I found out that Gordon Ramsay would be appearing on MasterChef today at 20.00. Funny because apparently the first challenge he gives the contestants is to prepare a liver dish. Hehehe. So I’m ready 🙂

Quite a coincidence, and honestly, I had no idea.

Today I was actually supposed to have lunch (grilled blood sausage, that is) at Meta. Unfortunately, the weather was so lovely that the bar was absolutely packed, and when I reached the „till”, I learned that all I could order was beer and a sausage with a stick to cook it over the campfire. This „campfire kit” is a pretty cool idea, really, but I wasn’t particularly keen on grilling myself a sausage over a fire.

So I came home, and somewhere in the back of my mind an idea for meatballs began to take shape. They were supposed to be fairly classic, meaning just ordinary minced-meat patties. As luck would have it, the shop also had some very nice poultry liver, and it all somehow came together.

This was my first time making them this way, with mushrooms, onions and, above all, that poultry liver. They came out very tender, with a dominant liver flavour and the aroma of fried mushrooms running through them. I wonder what Gordon Ramsay would say? He looks like someone who enjoys a bit of primitive cooking now and then, doesn’t he?

I liked them. Recommended.

At a glance: 

Preparation time: 40 minutes

Serves: makes 6 normal-sized patties, so that works out at six people (I got 7, but I made two smaller ones with Ninka in mind)

How many calories: there are lots of calories in a patty

Ingredients for minced-meat patties with a twist:

• 400 grams of poultry liver
• 500 grams of minced pork leg
• 4 shallots
• half a red onion
• 8 mushrooms (medium-sized)
• a teaspoon of coriander seeds (preferably crushed in a mortar; I crushed mine by hand)
• 1 hen’s egg
• 3 tablespoons of breadcrumbs
• ground black pepper
• salt

Recipe for unusual meatballs with mushrooms and poultry liver:

I finely chopped the red onion and shallots. I heated olive oil in a frying pan and added the onions.

I chopped the peeled mushrooms very finely and added them to the onions in the pan. I fried everything for about 4 – 5 minutes over medium heat. When it was ready, I transferred it to a bowl.

I poured a little olive oil into the same pan I had used for the mushrooms and onions, and added the poultry liver, carefully cleaned of membranes. I fried it for about 6 – 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then I took it out, let it cool a little and transferred it to a paper towel.

Using a sharp knife, I chopped the liver into very small pieces.

I put half a kilogram of minced pork leg into a deep bowl and added the egg, seasonings (salt, pepper and coriander) and breadcrumbs. I added the previously fried mushrooms and onions, and the liver. I mixed all the ingredients very thoroughly.

I heated olive oil in a clean frying pan and added meatballs shaped from the meat, liver and mushroom mixture. I fried them until golden on both sides over medium „heat” (5 on a scale of 1 – 10 on my hob). Once the patties were golden, I covered the pan with a lid and turned the „heat” down (on my induction hob, that’s 3 on a scale of 1 – 10). I cooked the patties covered for about 10 minutes. Then I removed the lid and fried them for another 3 minutes. Meatballs ready.

I served them with oven-baked potatoes and sweet beetroot and carrots. But it’s entirely up to you. Enjoy!