Pork and Chicken Liver Pate for Banh Mi

By stancec44

Banh mi without good pate and mayonnaise feels almost naked and incomplete. While you can find decent premade pate in specialty stores and at Lee’s sandwiches, nothing beats making your own–and it’s not that hard to do.

This is Hong’s mom’s easy pate recipe which goes great on anything but especially banh mi such as banh mi nem nuong and banh mi thit nuong.

Ingredients

• 2 cup bread crumb
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 lb chicken liver
• 1 lb ground pork
• 2 tbs sugar
• 1 tbs salt
• 1/2 tb pepper
• 1 head garlic, peeled
• 1-2 tb cognac (optional)
• 2-3 drops red food coloring (optional)

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Clean chicken liver by removing any brown or green trimmings and fatty vestiges. Combine water and bread crumbs, mix and set aside. Slowly add all the ingredients together in a food processor and puree well until smooth. (After cooking, liver tends to turn a pasty gray and ashen color which is quite unappealing. Add a few drops of red food coloring for aesthetics)

Add the mixture to a loaf pan/ceramic baking pan (use 2 if necessary) and bake until a tooth pick comes out clean in the center, roughly 30 minutes. Allow to cool and transfer to a canning jar or other sealed container.

Pate lasts about 1 week. If you plan on storing it longer, melt some butter and layer over the top of pate to refrigerate or freeze.