Duck liver pate is made by cooking duck liver with spices, onions, fats, and sometimes spirits, then blending it into a paste. The liver is cleaned and soaked before cooking, and additional ingredients like garlic or bacon can be added. The final product can be used as a spread or in dishes like beef Wellington.
Duck liver pate is a blend of duck livers, spices, onions, fats such as butter and cream, and sometimes spirits such as wine, cognac or sherry. The ingredients are cooked quickly in a pan and then ground together in a food processor to make a paste or whipped cream. The duck liver pate recipe is very similar to the foie gras recipe, except that the liver comes from a duck rather than a goose and is generally much less expensive. The resulting pate can be used as a spread for crackers or toast, or it can be used in dishes such as beef Wellington.
The main ingredient in duck liver pate is duck liver. Before being used, the liver must be cleaned and possibly wet. To cleanse the liver, all tissue, pieces of fat, the gallbladder, and other irregular sections must be removed. Afterwards, the liver can be soaked in water or milk for several hours to remove some of the sour taste and bitterness.
There are several recipes for duck liver pate, but they generally start with melting the butter in a skillet and frying the diced onions until they’ve turned a golden color and the butter has started to brown just a little. Duck fat is sometimes used in place of butter. Other ingredients – garlic, thyme, star anise, oregano or even bacon – can be added to the pan and fried to extract the flavour.
When the ingredients are ready for cooking, the liver is added and fried. It only takes a few minutes for the liver to cook completely. If wine or other liquor is being used, it can be added to the pan and reduced with the liver. In the last minute of cooking, the cream can be stirred into the mixture and allowed to reduce slightly.
The entire mixture is removed from the heat and placed in a food processor. Everything is then ground together to form a very fine paste. The more heavy cream you add, the lighter the final result will be. If a large amount of cream is used, the final duck liver pate will have an almost mousse-like consistency. The finished pate is left to cool, after which it can be placed in a container and refrigerated for a few hours until it sets tightly.
When served, duck liver pate can be spread on crackers, toast, or vegetables. It can also be used in dishes that call for pate or foie gras, such as beef Wellington. The pate is meant to be used up quickly, however, as it will only keep for a few days in the refrigerator.
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