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Livermush

Webster

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...a/k/a one of North Carolina's two unofficial food groups (alongside barbecue)..... :grin:
Clark Barlowe has scribbled the recipe in a grease-stained notebook, but he doesn’t need it. The black book sits on a steel table, underneath the list of tonight’s 12-course tasting menu and a few feet away from the stove where Barlowe stirs a boiling pot of pork shoulder and liver. Onions and garlic perfume the kitchen. He nods. It’s time to drain the pot, carefully reserving the broth. The stewed chunks of pork will pass through a grinder before Barlowe places the mixture back into the broth, bringing it to a boil. He’ll add cornmeal and spices, pour the thickened mixture into loaf pans, and chill it.

Barlowe knows how to make his great-grandmother's livermush because it's the kind of thing families like his, from the rural foothills of western North Carolina, pass down. That her recipe ended up here — in the kitchen of Barlowe's North Carolina-sourced restaurant, Heirloom, in Charlotte — tells you plenty about Barlowe's roots. "I remember my dad taking us to school, before even kindergarten, and stopping so we could get a livermush biscuit," he says. "And that was our breakfast."

Barlowe grew up in Lenoir, a town of roughly 18,000 people an hour and a half northwest of Charlotte, a place where stopping at a gas station for a square of fried pork liver with mustard is just what you do. Livermush, in its simplest form, is a loaf of pork liver and meat scraps bound with cornmeal. The chilled mixture sets before it is sliced and fried. Flavored with sage and black pepper, it tastes almost like a softer, richer sausage patty.

"I tell people if they like pâté and they like grits or cornbread, they'll like livermush," Barlowe says. But, he admits, diners can be hesitant. Many have never heard of the dish. Get much outside a 100-mile radius of Charlotte and the reaction to livermush — which is different from scrapple and liver pudding — is often a predictable wrinkling of the nose. "Just the word mush," he says. "It's not great."

Livermush is one of North Carolina's most important food traditions, maybe more significant than barbecue, even, because of its strong ties to a specific region and the fact that it's found hardly anywhere else. Yet some native North Carolinians, families with roots not far from Barlowe's, don't pass it on. My grandmother, who grew up a few towns over from Lenoir, ate it regularly as a child, but she didn't make it for my dad when he was a boy. He never fed it to my sister and me, even though we grew up in Charlotte, part of livermush country. And just like that, in a couple generations, the tradition is lost....
...for reference, I live in Morganton, NC, which is just a stone's throw southwest of Lenoir and to the northwest of Charlotte....

western-north-carolina.gif
 
Hmm...

"
What is the difference between livermush and scrapple? The biggest difference between livermush and scrapple comes down to their ingredients. Livermush, as the name describes, contains liver and other pork scraps, while scrapple is made using any available pork scraps and does not always contain liver."
 
Hmm...

"
What is the difference between livermush and scrapple? The biggest difference between livermush and scrapple comes down to their ingredients. Livermush, as the name describes, contains liver and other pork scraps, while scrapple is made using any available pork scraps and does not always contain liver."
I have never been introduced to either. I don't know why, but the word "mush" in the title is sort of a turn-off. :p Sounds maybe somewhat similar to Braunschweiger or Liverwurst, which lack the grain ingredient.
 
Livermush doesn't sound too appetizing!
 

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