Over the weekend, I got a craving for chopped liver, the way my grandmother makes it. I know that chopped liver has few fans outside of the Jewish retiree community, but I grew up in Eastern Europe, so it’s a taste I acquired as a child. Having recently purchased my very first food processor, I realized that nothing was standing in my way. Nothing except my hatred of touching raw meat

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Since I was craving chopped liver, and seriously contemplating making it, you can probably guess that I’m not a vegetarian. But touching raw meat just grosses me out. I know this isn’t a terribly eloquent of putting it, but: raw meat is totally gross. I never deal with it. I either cook vegetarian dishes or buy my meat already prepared. Thinking back over the past three years, I can recall only one occasion on which raw chicken entered my kitchen.

My squeamishness with raw meat is a problem I would like to overcome. So like an acrophobe who hopes to cure his fears by visiting a skyscraper’s observation deck, I walked over to Safeway and purchased a package of raw chicken livers and an onion. I knew I would have a problem when I had trouble taking the package out of the supermarket’s meat case. It looked wet and a bloody and I just didn’t want to touch it. Hoping to minimize my contact with the package, I walked back to the produce section, got a plastic bag (which should really be provided over by the meat section as well) and used the bag to get the livers out of the case.

After getting home, I took a deep breath and dumped the package out of the plastic bag into the sink. I took another deep breath and pulled open the lid. One more deep breath and I was handling a chicken liver. It was slippery. And unlike raw chicken, which doesn’t smell like roasted or baked chicken, raw chicken livers smelled a bit like cooked chicken livers. And did I mention it was slippery? Oh, and also quite bloody. I wondered if this is how a human liver feels to a surgeon. Then I thought, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

I managed to stop thinking long enough to clean off the livers and dump them into some boiling water. While the meat was cooking, I neurotically cleaned anything that came in contact with the raw chicken. Part of the grossness of raw meat is that I am convinced that I will almost definitely die of salmonella if it enters my kitchen. Chicken livers take about 15 minutes to cook, and I spent most of that time scrubbing.
My family’s recipe for chopped chicken livers includes only a few ingredients: chicken livers, fried onions and cooked carrots. I also had some white mushrooms around, so I decided to make two batches, one with onions and carrots and the other with onions and mushrooms.

Grandma’s Chopped Liver

• Half a container of raw chicken livers
• A quarter of a large white onion
• 5-6 baby carrots
• Olive oil

Grandma’s (Modified) Chopped Liver

• Half a container of raw chicken livers
• A quarter of a large white onion
• 8-10 white mushrooms
• Olive oil

Using olive oil, I fried up some onion and mushrooms while boiling a few baby carrots and the liver. Once everything was ready, I dumped the ingredients of the first batch into the food processor and used the “pulse” button until all of the ingredients were smoothly blended together. After cleaning out the food processor, I blended the second batch. The chopped liver made with carrots was softer and lighter in color while the batch with the onions and mushrooms was darker and had a rougher texture. I though that I had added too much carrot to the first batch, and assumed that it would be obvious once I tasted it, but was surprised by how unobtrusively the carrots blended into the livers. I couldn’t taste them at all. Both batches were quite delicious, although having gone through the trauma of touching the raw chicken livers took a lot of thefun out of eating the final product.

And so, my latest adventures with raw meat did not help me get over my squeamishness. This acrophobe may never set foot on an observation deck again. In fact, the experience only served to further my progression to vegetarianism. If I am this bothered by preparing a meal, should I really be forcing myself to prepare it? For me, the answer is no. Next time, I’m making a nice chickpea salad.

-NM