Welcome to Livermush Country!
Here are a few facts about livermush:
•Livermush is a blend of ground scrap pork meat + liver, and spices bound with enough cooked cornmeal mush to make it sliceable.
•Food historians trace its origins to German immigrants who ate something called pon hoss, (pork scraps blended with buckwheat and spices) and then brought it to America during the 1700s. The food ultimately came south to the mountains and Piedmont, where it wound up on WNC farms.
•Scrapple is similar to livermush but NOT the same. It has less liver and different spices are used. It tastes different too.
•By law, Livermush is required at least 30 percent pig liver to be classified as Livermush.
•One could purchase a five-pound block of Livermush for around 10 cents a pound in the 1930s and '40s.
•Hunter's Livermush, which is made in Marion, is only found within 100 miles of Marion.
•Hunters sells over a million pounds of livermush a year.
•Some historians connect its popularity to the Germans’ penchant for liverwurst, a smoked sausage made with pork scraps. Livermush emerged as an alternative that didn’t require a smoker and could be cut with cornmeal to feed more people.
•The 5 commercial livermush producers — Corriher’s, Hunter’s, Jenkins, Mack’s, and Neese’s — are all based in North Carolina.
•One producer of Livermush stated that the closer they get to the mountains in North Carolina, their livermush begins to outsell sausage.
•Hunter's Livermush in Marion produces 20,000 pounds every week for customers of stores in five counties.
•Although the composition is similar to liver pudding (which you can find in the eastern part of the state) and scrapple (commonly found in Mid-Atlantic states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey), livermush differs from these two with its liver content + binding element.
•Scrapple tends to contain less liver, whereas livermush has a higher ratio of liver and liver pudding is made with flour, and therefore has a softer consistency.
•Early settlers made livermush in cast iron pots and stirred with wooden paddles, incorporating whatever bits of the hog had not been used previously. A regional food born of necessity and hard times, its popularity is thought to have grown during the Civil War because it was an affordable substitute for more expensive cuts of meat.
•Pork jowls, pork livers, Cornmeal, flour, salt, pepper, sage and water are the ingredients in livermush.
•Liver mush is often compared to breakfast sausage and is sometimes called the poor man's pâté.
•Hunters Livermush founders Roy and Gurthie Hunter started production in 1955 at their Marion facility.
•Livermush is certainly high in Vitamin A and Iron, but a 2 ounce slice contains 90 calories, 40 of them from fat. And if you’re one of those people who need to boost your cholesterol level, that 2 ounce slice will provide 17% of your daily cholesterol requirement.
•There are only five commercial livermush producers on the planet; Mack’s and Jenkins Livermush are located in Shelby in the southwestern part of the state, Hunters Livermush is in the mountain community of Marion, Neese’s is in the piedmont city of Greensboro and in tiny China Grove it’s Corriher’s.
•There are two livermush festivals held every year in North Carolina. Marion, North Carolina, has the Livermush Festival, and Shelby, North Carolina, hosts the Mutts, Music, and Mush Festival.
*Livermush is a natural relaxer, cures stress, cures anxiety, cures sadness and best of all is DELICIOUS.
The name doesn’t do it any favors that’s for sure. Every culture has its prized foods that outsiders can’t stomach. People either LOVE it, won’t dare to even try it, or they hate it. For those of us who grew up on livermush, we love it and will gladly eat your share.
-By Kim Wright
Peace, Love, and Livermush.