Paté de hígado de pollo
Also known as Paté de Hígado de Pollo
Nationwide, Spain
A smooth chicken liver pate.
Overview
Paté de Hígado de Pollo is a smooth chicken-liver spread enriched with butter or duck fat, cream and aromatics. The Curesmith version is deliberately fully cooked rather than pink-centred, because Campylobacter can be present inside poultry liver.
Where it's from
How to recognise it
The pâté should be smooth, glossy and brown-pink, with clean butter, liver, thyme and brandy aromas. It must be fully cooked without becoming grainy. Pink raw pockets, purge, sourness or a long warm holding period are unacceptable.
Origins and history
Chicken-liver pâté brought the technique of foie-gras and pork-liver preparations to a cheaper, widely available organ. It became a restaurant and home-cooking staple because the liver cooks quickly and blends into a remarkably smooth mousse. That culinary ease created a recurring safety problem: recipes often prized rosy centres even though internal contamination can survive partial cooking. Modern guidance therefore changes the home technique without abandoning the dish, using full cooking, rapid chilling and careful ready-to-eat handling.
- Protection
- Unprotected.
- Seasonality
- The winter matanza.
Serving and cultural significance
Serve on toast with pickled shallots, fruit jelly, mustard or a sharp salad. Allow a small portion to soften briefly so the butter and liver become creamy, but keep the main container refrigerated. Because it is a high-moisture ready-to-eat food, use clean utensils and avoid repeated warm service.
Recipe and cure
This is not a finished recipe. It is a window into how this meat is traditionally cured. Before you follow any process, please run it through one of our curing calculators, so the salt, cure and timings are right and safe for your own batch.
- Meat
- chicken
- Cut
- chicken livers
- Salt (%)
- 5.5
- Fermented
- No
- Smoked
- No
- Maturation
- cook, chill, rest
- Basis
- per 1000 g green meat
- Style
- Chicken liver pate
Ingredients
- heavy cream25% · 250 g/kg
- four-spice mix0.4% · 4 g/kg
- kosher salt5.5% · 55 g/kg
- duck fat or butter8.5% · 85 g/kg
Notes
- This is a cooked product. Cook thoroughly to a safe internal temperature and cool promptly; cooking does not kill botulinum spores, so keep the warm-holding window short and refrigerate.
In the Codex
What this product teaches, and where to read more.
Temple. Pillar, Hygiene Control