Open Faced Liver Paté LeverPostej Meatloaf Sandwiches

A traditional open-faced sandwich featuring meatloaf flavored with bacon and liver, topped with pickled beets, sautéed mushrooms, even crispy bacon and onions

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This open-faced sandwich is for the hard core carnivore out there.  Not those of you who dabble in boneless, skinless, chicken breasts.  Nope.  This is for those of you who will eat the whole cow, tongue to tail.  [I deliberately exclude myself from the head, though if someone presents me with a slice of head cheese I'll eat it.  I'm just not gonna make it and blog about it, okay?] It briefly passed through my brain to apologize to my vegetarian readers [thank you for stopping by! If you'd like a vegetarian open-faced sandwich recipe, here's my shaved beet one] for posting yet another meat-containing recipe, and then I realized that no, I'm going to own this.

In my opinion, it is disrespectful to the animal to cherry pick the handful of parts that you choose to consume.  I'm not saying to rush out and eat bung, instead I am saying to broaden your horizons and try more than just steaks and burgers or boneless skinless chicken breasts.  Beef tongue is pretty tasty, and the tail--man, I'm drooling just thinking about Elise's oxtail stew recipe.  But each bovine only has 1 tongue and, sadly, 1 tail.  There's a lot more to that animal--including the liver.

This, as you can tell from the head-scratching 'how do you pronounce it?**' title, contains liver.  If you like liver, you'll probably love it.  If you don't like liver, this smells like bacon while it's cooking and looks like meatloaf after it's baked, so give it a try.  My kids are not fans of the beets and mushrooms, so for them they are just eating a meatloaf sandwich, but you're welcome to make it your own. Try this, broaden your horizons, and respect the animal that you choose to consume.

This recipe is my adaptation of a traditional Danish open-faced sandwich or smørrebrød (literal translation is butter bread) using liver paté or leverpostej.  Like a Reuben sandwich is traditionally served with sauerkraut, swiss cheese, and thousand island dressing, the Danish leverpostej smørrebrød is served with pickled beets and sautéed mushrooms, sometimes crispy bacon or onions.

For more recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. For more recipes using mushrooms, please see my Mushroom Recipes Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating a varied diet sourced from the neighbor's friend's cows, the farm share, the farmer's market, and the garden.
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LeverPostej Liver Paté Meatloaf

Ingredients

• ¾ pound liver
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 pound bacon
• ¾ cup (2 small) onions, chopped
• 1 cup chopped white mushrooms
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 egg
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 cup soft breadcrumbs
• ½ cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried dill (or 2-3 teaspoons fresh, unless you're confused if your kid harvested dill or fennel. They looked the same to me and my nose isn't working.)
• 2 teaspoons salt (I used kosher)
• 1 teaspoon pepper

For the sandwiches, you'll also need slices of sturdy bread, butter, pickled beets, and more sautéed mushrooms, crispy bacon, and onions (all optional).

Instructions

1. In a small bowl, soak liver in milk for an hour in the refrigerator, then drain.
2. In a large skillet over medium heat, sauté bacon until crisply cooked.  Remove from skillet (don't clean out that wonderful bacon grease!) and set aside to cool briefly.
3. Finely chop the soaked liver and sauté in the same skillet over medium heat until firm and beginning to brown, about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool briefly.
4. In the same skillet sauté onion and mushrooms until they are softened and the mushrooms give up their liquid.  Set aside to cool briefly.
5. Place all of the cooked and cooled items into the food processor and pulse to a homogenous mix.
6. In a large bowl combine the rest of the meatloaf ingredients (ground beef through pepper) with the cooked mix.  Combine thoroughly (I do this by hand, but the paddle of a stand mixer works fine too.
7. Pack into a loaf pan.  Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour. 
8. Cool 10 minutes until firm, then slice.
9. To make the sandwiches, lay a slice of Liver Postej on top of buttered sturdy bread.  Top with pickled beets, sautéed mushrooms, crispy bacon and onions if you like.  
10. Eat with a knife and fork, the Danish way.

**My brother will correct me, I am sure--though my Danish sister-in-law will not, but I pronounce it lever post-eye.

This post is shared on Fresh Foods Wednesday and What's Cookin' Wednesday, Clever Chicks Blog Hop, Tasty Tuesdays, Food on Friday