What's the story with brown chicken livers?

May 19, 2009 1:42 PM

What's the story with brown chicken livers? There always seem to be some in the carton, mixed in with red ones. They seem spongier. Are they lower in quality? Should I toss them?
posted by markcmyers to home & garden (3 comments total)

Not necessarily, to both questions. The red livers may be treated with carbon monoxide to make them look fresher.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:36 PM on May 19

Because chicken livers are so cheap, I doubt that anyone is using modified atmosphere packing for them. And if they were, the livers in the modified atmosphere pack would be uniformly bright red like that watermelon-colored tuna that is served in supermarket sushi bars.

I do know that most vertebrate blood turns brown when exposed to oxygen. Most likely, the red livers were the ones were surrounded by other livers/fluid inside the bucket on the chicken gutting line, and thus prevented from oxidizing and turning brown. The brownish ones have probably oxidized somewhat from being on or near the top of the gut bucket. This doesn't explain the sponginess, though. I'm not familiar enough with chicken pathology to give you an answer, but I do know something about food production lines. But, at $1.49/lb or whatever they go for now it seems like a cheap thing to toss.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 4:38 PM on May 19 [1 favorite]

I'm reading Micheal Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (fab, BTW), in which he describes participating in killing and eviscerating chickens on an idyllic "clean food" farm that raises the chickens in the most biologically appropriate and ecologically healthy way one can imagine. For what it's worth, it sounds like brown is a normal color for the liver. Here is how he describes the evisceration:

"The viscera were unexpectedly beautiful, glistening in a whole palette of slightly electric colors, from the steely blue striations of the heart muscle to the sleek milk chocolate liver to the dull mustard of the gall bladder." (p. 234)
posted by tentacle at 11:32 AM on May 20