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Immediately after the Torah permits eating meat (Deuteronomy 12:20), it prohibits consuming the blood of any animal: “For the blood is the life, and you must not consume the life with the flesh” (verse 23). In other words, blood has a special function – to keep living beings alive. Therefore, it may not be consumed.
Meat is kashered by salting, as salt draws blood out of meat. Here is how it is done. First the meat is washed off, then covered with coarse salt and left for about twenty minutes. It is then washed again, to rinse off the salt and the blood. After this, the meat is kosher and may be eaten. Alternatively, meat may be kashered by broiling, as fire also draws blood out of meat. It is customary to lightly salt the meat before broiling it. (If meat is cooked before the blood has been removed, the meat becomes prohibited since the blood released during the cooking process is then reabsorbed.)
The liver, because it is so full of blood, cannot be kashered through salting. It must be broiled.
Nowadays, kosher supermarkets generally sell meat that has already been kashered under rabbinic supervision. The meat’s kashrut certification generally attests to this. Therefore, the consumer does not need to kasher it.
