Bolognese sauce is one of the greatest ways to sneak some liver into your family’s diet. You can easily sneak in a healthy dose of liver without changing the flavour of the pasta sauce at all. This sauce can be used on any kind of pasta noodles (spaghetti, or alternative gluten-free noodles like chickpea), it can also be used on zucchini noodles, or stuffed into bell peppers! Check out out our favourite Organic Spelt Spaghetti by Byron Bay Gourmet Pasta in the shop section of the website!
INGREDIENTS
1kg of local grass-fed and finished minced beef
350-500 grams Organic Pasture raised chicken liver or Lamb Liver. We don’t use beef because we cannot currently get this from the abattoir. We can source chicken liver from time to time and lamb liver From Local Dorper lamb at Bex Hill and can be found at local farmers markets.
1 jar of tomato sauce (400ml - 700ml, depending on what you want to use your sauce for)
5 tablespoons of your favourite fat (tallow, butter, ghee, or olive oil)
pinch or two of sea salt
1/2 tablespoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 organic red pepper, chopped
1 organic yellow zucchini, chopped
1 small onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 large leaves of organic collard greens, chopped
a few leaves of fresh, organic, basil (for garnish)
1 box of your preferred pasta (we like Organic Spelt Spaghetti by Byron Bay Gourmet Pasta)
INSTRUCTIONS
For the Sauce
Add 2.5 tablespoons of choice of fat (tallow, ghee, butter, olive oil, etc) to a hot pan, and once melted all the ground beef, herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano) and salt.
Chop the meat into smaller pieces using a spatula so that it is spread out across the pan.
In a separate pan, add the rest of the fat and all of the veggies and garlic, chopped up. Make sure to continuously stir the meat and veggies (seperate pans) to ensure nothing burns!
As the meat starts to brown, put the liver into a food processor (or blender) and mix on high until smooth. If the liver is frozen, you can grate the liver instead.
Once the beef mince is almost done being cooked (brown the whole way through, should take about 5-10 minutes) you can add the liver to the pan. Liver cooks very quickly!
Combine meat and veggies into one large pan.
Add in your tomato sauce (see notes below for quantity).
Continue to stir/ simmer for about 5-10 minutes to evaporate some of the liquid and let the sauce marinate into the meat.
For the Pasta
1. Bring filtered water to a boil, and cook pasta according to box (generally 2 cups of water per cup of pasta; cooking time will vary depending on type of pasta you choose).
2. Strain pasta when cooked, and add to the pan with sauce; mix through.
3. Serve with fresh chopped basil
Tips
1. You can use any vegetables you like, mushrooms, carrots, spinach, etc. Such a great way to incorporate more veggies!
1. The amount of liver you use depends on how much you like liver; as someone who loves it, I used about 500g and the taste still feels “hidden” to me, but if your trying to fool kids.. perhaps opt for 250g.
2. The amount of tomato sauce you use depends on what you want to use the sauce for, in these pictures, I used a little more that 1/2 a 680ml jar of tomato sauce (mostly because it was what I had leftover in the fridge). If your making tacos, 1/2 a jar is perfect; if you’re making pasta sauce, opt for a little more.
3. You can also add a cup or two of bone broth or a cup of red wine to the mix and let it simmer for 10 minutes longer to add even more flavour!
4. Feel free to swap out the liver for any other organ meat!