Pfälzer Leberwurst – A Regional Specialty Liverwurst

In this article you will learn how to make your own Pfälzer liverwurst.

This liverwurst is a speciality from the region Palatinate in Germany.

A traditional Pfälzer liver sausage has a slightly coarse consistency and a hearty seasoning. The proportion of liver in it is quite high, yet it is not pink, but gray. During the production no cure is used. 

Traditionally, the Palatinate liver sausage is prepared with a pig’s head. However, I have chosen a modified version with fat pork belly. 

I have other liverwurst recipes as well. Here you can find my classic liverwurst and my veal liverwurst. 

But enough talking now. You can watch the complete Pfälzer liverwurst recipe via video or read it. I wish you a lot of fun and success!

Making Pfälzer liverwurst at home – What do you need

Ingredients for a classic Pfälzer liverwurst:

Meat for 1 kg Pfälzer liverwurst:

• 500 g pork belly
• 200 g lean pork 
• 300 g pork liver

Spices per kg of meat:

• 20 salt
• 4g marjoram
• 3g white pepper
• 2g sugar
• 2g nutmeg
• 1g allspice
• 1g clove powder
• 75g onion (fried in butter until translucent)

Equipment needed to make Pfälzer liverwurst

Meat Grinder

You need a meat grinder to “grind” the meat. The meat is chopped into small chunks with it.

Thermometer & Cooking Pot / Sous Vide Cooker

The easiest way to cook the meat is to use a Sous Vide Cooker. This way you can cook the meat gently in a vacuum bag. Don’t you have a home? No problem! Use a saucepan and heat the water. To reach the exact temperature, you will need a thermometer. Both variants achieve the same result.

Preserving jars / casings

Since I fill the liver sausage into jars, I used jars for this purpose. Alternatively you can fill the mixture into a casing or a can. You can find more information about this in this article.

Homemade Pfälzer liverwurst – Step-By-Step Instruction

1. Cut the meat into pieces. The size varies depending on how big your meat grinder is. The bigger the grinder, the bigger your pieces of meat can be.

2. Put the pieces of meat and the back fat in a sealable plastic bag or vacuum them.

Note: If you vacuum the meat pieces / put them in a plastic bag and cook them sous vide, you will not lose any water while cooking. 

This way, you do not need any additional broth later as the whole broth and fat is preserved in the bag. 

If you want to cook your meat without the Sous Vide method you can cook it in water.  You need to weigh the meat before and after the cooking process. The lost weight needs to be added back into the sausage mixture. This way you re-add the amount of broth that you lost while cooking.

3. Put the bags in the tempered water or in the sous vide cooker and cook the meat and fat at 76 degrees Celsius (169 Fahrenheit) for 70 minutes. If you do not use the sous-vide method you just cook them in a pot.

4. Cut the onions into strips and slowly simmer in an buttered pan until golden brown for up to 10 min..

5. Cut the liver into strips.

6. Grind the spices into a fine powder.

7. Take the bags out of the water  and separate the juice and meat.

8. Place the liver in the (still hot) water. You can poach them there for about 5 minutes. The strong taste of the liver becomes a little milder.

9. It’s time to grind the meat and liver. I used the smallest perforated disc.

10. Add the salt and spices and the reserved broth to the ground up meat. Mix everything well.

11. Your Pfälzer liverwurst is almost ready. You can now fill it in jars. Make sure that there are no air pockets in the jars.

12. Now all you have to do is boil the jars. The time depends on the size of the jar. It takes 2 hours at 100 °C (212 Fahrenheit).  If you use a casing, you have to poach the liverwurst per mm diameter for 1 minute at 80 °C (176 Fahrenheit). So caliber 60/50 needs to be poached 60 minutes.

12. Your Pfälzer liver sausage is ready 😄. Enjoy!

How long does the Pfälzer liverwurst keep?

In theory, the preserved Pfälzer liver sausage can be kept up to a year in a jar or can. However, I do not think it will last so long, because of the delicious taste.

It is best to store the liverwurst in a cool and dark place. 

When opening, the rule is: 

See it, smell it, taste it! If you use a casing, you should store the liver sausage in the refrigerator and consume it within a maximum of 10 days.