Slow-cooked Beef Mince and Liver Bolognese

If you eat meat, I strongly encourage you to find ways to get more organ meats into your diet. It is a real failing of modern culture that we have removed these parts of the animal from out diets because they are hands down the most nutrient-dense. And as a result of phasing them out of mainstream cuisine, many of us struggle with the texture and taste as we are just not used to them. If you feed a child liver from weaning age, it is likely that they won’t have the same issue. Nevertheless, we are where we are, so I am in the process of remedying this for myself and my clients by experimenting with cooking with liver in ways that make it not only palatable, but, ideally, delicious!

This recipe is one of those. The only downfall is that it doesn’t include a huge amount of liver because I’m a bit of a pussy with the flavour so I’m easing myself in gently. So if you are already a fan, I recommend adding more liver than I have. I’m currently working on a 1:4 ratio of liver to mince.

Ox liver is so unbelievably nutrient dense. It’s like nature’s multivitamin - particularly high in certain nutrients that are not as abundant in most other foods, so we often find people become deficient in them. These include vitamin A, the B Vitamins (B2, B3, B5, B6, B9 (folate) and B12), CoQ10, iron, copper (it’s the number one food source of this mineral), selenium and choline. So, with that in mind, I hope I’ve convinced you to incorporate it into your diet and try this recipe.

TIME: 1hr 30mins

SERVES: 4 - 6 people depending on portion sizes

SEASON: All seasons

INGREDIENTS:

Roughly 125g 100% grass fed ox liver (or you can blend c. 250g if that is the size of the pack (I use Piper’s Farm), then freeze the rest in smaller portions for stews and bolognese)

500g 100% grass-fed beef mince

Butter for cooking

1 large onion (chopped)

6 cloves garlic (finely chopped or minced)

100g mixed mushrooms (roughly chopped)

1 sweet yellow pepper

1 sweet red pepper

2-3 handfuls of cavolo nero, finely chopped

3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

180 ml red wine

400ml beef stock

1.5 tsp dried oregano

3 heaped tbsp of nutritional yeast

1 tsp salt

2 tsp black pepper

1 heaped tsp dried rosemary (use fresh or semi-fresh if you would prefer and vary the quantities accordingly)

1 heaped tsp dried parsley (use fresh or semi-fresh if you would prefer and vary the quantities accordingly)

METHOD:

1. Place the livers in a blender or food processor and blend into a paste.

2. In a large casserole dish, gently fry up the mince and add the blended liver until the meat seals and then transfer into a separate dish, off the heat.

3. Add a knob of butter into the same casserole dish and then add the chopped onion.

4. Once the chopped onion starts to soften, add the mushrooms and chopped peppers then the garlic and balsamic vinegar, so that the vegetables absorb the flavour as they cook.

5. After a couple of minutes return the meat to the pan and add the tinned tomatoes, wine, stock, 80g of the liver (freeze the rest for another day), salt and pepper.

6. Once bubbling away, stir in the nutritional yeast and then cover and let the bolognese simmer for at least an hour.

7. Add in the herbs and the cavolo nero about 5 minutes before serving.

8. Enjoy in a traditional way with pasta, or with baked squash or sweet potato, and a lovely fresh side salad for extra greens.