Approximately 400g. Fresh or frozen.
Try this recipe from our book, The Ethical Omnivore - Christopher's seared liver with tomatoes and caramelised onions.
Organ meats from healthy animals are among the most nutrient-dense foods and were highly prized in traditional societies where every part of the animal was consumed. The operative word here is 'healthy'. Organs such as the liver and kidneys perform critical filtering and cleansing functions in the body. The last thing you want to be eating is the organs from an unhealthy animal that led a miserable, restricted life in a shed.
All the organs we offer come from the whole, pasture-raised animals we source from regeneratively- managed farms. These animals are vigorous, robust and genuinely free ranging and their diets are diverse and complex resulting in prolific gut flora and healthy organs.
About liver
Liver is rich in protein, low in calories and packed with essential minerals and vitamins but it's particularly important because it supplies vitamins in easily accessible, 'active' forms such as vitamin D3, B12, folate, choline and retinol ('active' vitamin A). By contrast, plant sources of vitamin A require us to convert them during digestion in order to use them. And, of course, liver is rich in iron, supplied in the haem form which is helps maintain adequate stores of iron, particularly important for women.
About Boer goats
We received our first delivery of Jo and Craig Stewart's 'Gourmet Goat Lady' Boer goats farmed at Buena Vista Farm near Gilgandra in November 2011 and we've been buying it almost every fortnight since then. Goat has it's fans, like our friend, James, who says 'Goat is the new lamb', but it's taken a while for people here to catch on.
In the rest of the world, goat is the most commonly eaten meat and goat milk the most widely consumed but, while we export a lot, we don't eat much. That's due partly to unfamiliarity and partly to bad press.
Feral ('rangeland') versus farmed goat
90% of the goat sold and exported in Australia is feral or 'low input' composite goat - marketed under the more poetic euphemism of 'Rangeland' goat. The quality of feral goat meat can be highly variable depending on where and how the goats lived and buying it can be a bit of a lottery - sometimes it's plump and delicious and other times stringy and tough.
The variable quality and unfamiliarity means that folks are a little wary of goat and tend to default to lamb, but healthy, farmed goat, such as those tended and managed by the Stewarts, is an altogether different product with consistently high quality and wonderful flavour.
Photo by Alan Benson from The Ethical Omnivore.
