The Best Way to Cook Deer Liver (Even If You Don’t Like the Taste)

Big-game liver is loaded with vitamins, iron, and essential amino acids, making it one of the most powerful foods you can bring home from the field. By adding it to ground meat and sausage, you’ll not only boost nutrition, but also increase your yield, especially with venison. And if you’re a die-hard waterfowl hunter with a pile of geese, this works beautifully with goose breast and livers, too.

Oh, and if you’re worried about eating toxins because liver is a filter, don’t! The liver breaks down unwanted compounds and sends them out through the kidneys or digestive tract. Those substances don’t build up in the organ itself, which means liver is safe to eat.

Adding liver to ground meat is nothing new. You’ll find “ancestral blends” from farmers and ranchers that often mix in liver, heart, and kidney. You can use all of these in your grind (and if you’re grinding waterfowl don’t forget the gizzard!) but I typically only add liver. That’s because heart is delicious on its own and I enjoy treating it like a steak. Kidney, on the other hand, has an even stronger flavor than liver and can overwhelm a batch quickly.

Any time you eat liver, from any animal, always make sure it’s of good quality and free of cysts, parasites (called flukes) or infections. For more details on how to harvest and clean a liver, check out Anna Borgman’s article How To Clean and Cook Liver.

Finding the perfect ratio of meat to fat to organ is a game of balance. Too little liver and you won’t get the nutritional benefit. Too much and you’ll end up with mushy, iron-forward meat that no one in your household will want to eat twice. And of course, because venison is so lean, I always make sure to add fat such as pork fatback for its clean flavor. After trial and error, here are the ratios I like best:

For Plain Ground Meat (“Burger”)
10% organ
20% fat
70% venison

For Sausage
15% organ
30% fat
55% venison + seasoning blend for your specific sausage

If you’re new to eating liver, start with bold sausage styles—think Mexican chorizo or a well-spiced breakfast sausage. The seasoning helps balance the liver’s metallic, iron-forward notes.

Grinding meat is one of those tasks where the small details make a big difference, especially when liver is involved. Start by trimming the liver to remove the outer membrane, any large veins, and connective tissue, all of which can create off-textures in the final grind.

If you want a milder flavor, soak chopped liver in salted milk for several hours. This helps draw out excess blood and tones down the strong, iron-forward flavor. Just be sure to pat it completely dry before grinding.

When it comes time to actually grind, temperature is critical. Ice-cold meat grinds more easily and has better texture than meat that is barely cold. That’s even more true for liver because it’s such a soft organ. You want the liver almost frozen, and, if possible, the grinder parts should also be chilled in the freezer for a few hours before grinding.

Once everything is ground, cook it as you would a regular burger or sausage. If you still want to “hide” the flavor of the liver, turn the ground meat into flavorful meatballs, smash gyros, or tacos. The spices and aromatics in these recipes help mask any lingering iron notes.

I hope this shows that you don’t have to love liver to eat it, and you definitely don’t have to force down chalky pan-fried slices to “be healthy.” Adding liver to your grind is truly the best way to use this nutrient-dense organ, especially if you want a clean-tasting, versatile product that honors the whole animal.