“No way, no how, liver is not going into my mouth…”

“I’m not a liver fan, but I would eat this.”

“What exactly is…a nip?”

To nip or not to nip. That is a really good question!

Livernips are just one of those things that you either really love or, really won’t try 😉 There is nothing not to love about these moist, delicious dumplings.

My mama used to make the best livernips in the entire world. And it all started with a beautiful pot roast nestled in the crockpot onto a bed of red potatoes and baby carrots and topped with slices of sweet onion.

Instead of throwing out that AMAZING potlicker, (broth), country women like mama would use it as the base for livernips, or liver dumplings.

I know liver can be scary. Quite frankly, it’s not on my list of top 1000 favorite foods. But formed into a nice little nip, you just can’t beat ’em!

Beef Pot Roast

Ingredients:

1, 4-5 pound beef roast

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 package  Onion Soup Mix

1 package baby carrots

10-12 baby red potatoes, halved or quartered

1 sweet Vidalia onion

1 package fresh mushrooms

Pepper to taste

1/4 cup beef stock or water

Directions:

Pour water or beef stock into crockpot. Add carrots and potatoes. Place roast on top of vegetables. Cover roast with undiluted cream of mushroom soup. Top mushroom soup with onion soup. Place sliced onions on top of onion soup. Allow to cook on low between 8-10 hours depending on the exact size of your roast and cooking heat of your crockpot.

Livernips (liver dumplings)

1 package calf liver – boiled 30 minutes and drained of all liquid

1 sweet onion

5 cups of flour

1 tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

1 egg

1 tbsp. sage

1 tbsp. basil

1 tbsp. corriander

3/4 cup beef stock

10 cups of beef stock or broth

Directions:

Place 10 cups of beef stock in large stock pot and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, place liver in food processor and process until it is the consistency of sand. Be careful as to not process into pate. This should be very dry and crumbly. Remove liver and process the onion until very fine. In a large mixing bowl, place liver, onion, and remainder of ingredients. Using a dough hook blend the ingredients until you have formed a dough. If the batter is too dry, add tablespoons of broth until you reach the desired consistency. Using a teaspoon or cookie scoop (my preference), drop dough into the boiling broth. Continue until you have dropped all of the batter. The batter will be tight in the pan as shown above, and can appear they won’t all fit, but that’s ok. They will rise as they cook and there is more room underneath the top layer. Once you have finished dropping all dough, reduce heat to simmer and allow the dumplings to cook about 30 minutes. Serve warm with beef roast.

To round out the meal, we always serve with collard greens, garlic butter snap green beans and pickled beets.

I like Southern Comfort! Bon appetit y’all!