So wow, did the reaction to announcing this one surprise me a lot. Quite a few people who are very much into knowing exactly what they're eating, also apparently like their meat cuts to be good and anonymous. They don't know just how rich a cut of meat they're missing out on, nor just how easy it is to do!
So just how easy is it? Let's find out after the jump!
Mow that we've seen the finished article, let's take a look at how a tongue looks when you first buy it:
Now, first things first, as I understand it's a problem in some places, where does one purchase a tongue? Well, the short answer is, even though they might not have them on display, if your butcher is preparing his own cuts of meat and not just getting stuff out of shrink wrap (you know, a *good* butcher), then he's gonna have tongue if you ask for it.
Now, it's not necessarily obvious from the picture here, but this tongue actually has a piece of jawbone attached, some smaller ones will also have teeth attached near the base. You can ask your butcher to remove this, but it's easy enough to do, just run your sharpest knife along the curvature of the bone, the meat will be easy to cut through. And you'll end up with something looking like this:
Now, every part of the tongue we have left (pictured on the right) is edible at this point, we'll be getting rid of some of it, but you *can* eat everything if you want to. The good news is, it's also prepped for cooking!
NB: you might be tempted to score or remove the skin from the top of the tongue, don't touch that yet, it's going to hold the juices is whilst this cooks!
Now, you can cook this the easiest in a crock pot. Place the tongue, whole, into the crock pot along with a chopped onion, a decent hit of salt, some garlic (as always, fresh is better), and some coriander. I've seen bay leaves used instead of coriander, but hey! it's my recipe :) Fill the pot with water so the tongue is covered.
No special trick to this here, you need to put the crock pot on a high heat, and then cook for 6-7 hours. I kept the tongue rare-ish for preference, but if you want to cook it till it's entirely brown, that's fine too. Fair warning, tongues are basically hollow, and cook from the inside out when you use this method, as the finished picture probably suggests.
Once the tongue is cooked and ready (and drained, try to avoid making a mess), it'll look like this!
Now, once again, I kept this fairly rare, so you might wanna let it darken a little further. Also, as mentioned previously, everything here is edible! That said we're going to remove the skin cause it's chewy and has little flavour (my dogs LOVE it though). The good news is, the skin will just peel off. Again, no trick here, just start peeling, you can just use your hands, it'll come away real easy.
2 other things you might want to do, first, the top of the tongue will still have a taste bud like texture, you might wanna go over that with your knife as it can be unsettling, especially if this is your first tongue. Second, there's a blood vessel at the base of the tongue that you might wanna remove, again it's edible, but it's chewy, and has little flavour). The best way I can suggest of locating it, is that you have one on your own tongue and it's in the same position, about where it meets your jaw.
Then all you need to do is cut and serve!
So, depending on what you do with this, you might get around 7-8 servings out of it. Some people use it for Taco filling. It's a great sandwich meat, or you can just serve it up with some veg and mashed potato :)
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