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Edirne-jigar Liver in Turkish

Edirne jigar (Turkish-style fried liver)

A real Turkish feast—your guests will love it! Meltingly tender inside, crispy outside!

Lydia

Recipe author

Composition / ingredients

Servings:

Beef liver

1000

Wheat flour

250

Vegetable oil

Salt

Ground black pepper

Bell pepper (2 for the sauce, 4 sliced)

Tomatoes (2 for the sauce, 4 sliced)

Yogurt (can be swapped for fresh mozzarella)

200

Chili pepper (dried is best)

100

Translation table of volumetric measures

Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe

By weight of the composition:

Proteins 40 % 6 g

Fats 7 % 1 g

Carbohydrates 53 % 8 g

69 kcal

GI: 43 / 0 / 57

Cooking method

Cooking time: 30 min

Step 1:

Carefully peeling off the membranes and removing the ducts, cut the liver into fairly thin slices—about as thin as fish for sushi.
Step 2:

Meanwhile, pour plenty of oil into a large Dutch oven or a deep skillet. I'll say up front that the richness of this dish doesn't depend on how much oil you use, but its success does. Skimp on the oil and you'll end up with a mess, not Edirne jigar! "Jigar" means liver—in Turkish, in Azerbaijani, in Uzbek. It seems this cut goes by the same name in every Turkic language.
Step 3:

Salt the liver and set the flour nearby.
Step 4:

Then dredge a handful of liver in the flour.
Step 5:

Shake it off well—whatever clings, clings; we don't want extra flour in the oil!
Step 6:

And into the hot oil it goes.
Step 7:

Stir with a slotted spoon so the liver doesn't clump together.
Step 8:

35–40 seconds and you get this color!
Step 9:

Now for the dried peppers. Young, unripe peppers are gathered and dried in the shade. They aren't too hot—mild, really—but still tasty and fragrant. I'm not sure what you'd substitute; I have a similar Spanish variety, and in a pinch I'll use regular bell pepper, even undried. Though slicing some and drying it in a barely warm, slightly cracked oven to keep on hand is easy—otherwise these peppers always go to waste!
Step 10:

Anyway, the peppers go into the oil too—not to fry, just to warm through. I suspect the liver fried in the second batch turns out even livelier and tastier!
Step 11:

See? They've gotten even drier and more brittle—no, better put, crunchier. While I was eating the liver, I crunched down a few and they were delicious.
Step 12:

Now for the presentation. The bundle of peppers at the back and right is just decoration—those are still fresh peppers. At the left and front is a sauce of tomatoes and fresh peppers: grate the tomatoes and peppers, warm them with a drop of oil, and season with salt. On the right are fresh vegetables and onion—because why cook what you can eat raw and get the vitamins and goodness from? Especially with that yogurt right there. Yes, in Edirne there's yogurt—it has the texture of fresh mozzarella and you can slice it.