Fried chicken livers - perfect warm weather appy

The recipe for fried chicken livers came through my Twitter feed this week from Saveur magazine. After drooling for days, I decided to make it as an appy for Sunday lunch. It was absolutely worth pulling out the deep fryer for. Here's the tweaked recipe, with my notes:

*To make self-rising flour, just mix together 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 1/4 tsp baking powder, 1/8 tsp salt.

* If you don't have any buttermilk on hand, make your own with a cup of milk and 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice. Mix and let stand for five minutes.

*The recipe calls for 2 cups of self-rising flour, but I just used 1 cup and it was more than enough.

*Enjoy with a glass of ice-cold beer. We had it today with Stella Artois.

Ingredients:

Enough canola oil to safely fill your deep fryer
1 lb. chicken livers
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups self-rising flour
salt and pepper
1 tsp poultry seasoning - I used a chicken rub mix from Anatol's, my favourite little spice store in Montreal
Hot sauce, for dipping (I experimented with a combination of Bulldog and Louisiana Hot Sauce and found that was quite good, too.)

Prepare the livers: trim off the fatty, stringy bits and rinse them (the livers, not the bits) in cold water.
Set your deep fryer to the "chicken" setting (340 - 350 degrees).
While oil is heating, soak the livers in buttermilk for 5 minutes.
Combine flour, salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning in a small baking dish.
Fish each liver out of the buttermilk - use a fork to keep your fingers clean - and lay them in the flour mixture.
Use another fork, gently toss the livers until coated lightly with flour.
Shake off the excess flour and place in the deep fryer basket.
Fry the livers in batches of 5-6, until they are golden brown, about 3–4 minutes. Let the excess oil blot off on a paper-towel lined plate.
Serve with hot sauce. 


Fried chicken livers - perfect warm weather appy