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Braised Beef Tongue
Order a fresh tongue. Wash and put tongue in a kettle, cover with boiling water; cook slowly two to three hours. Remove tongue from water, peel off skin, and trim off roots. Place in Dutch oven or deep earthen dish, and surround with one-half cup each carrot, turnip, celery and onion, cut in half-inch dice, one green pepper (seeds and veins removed) cut in shreds, and two sprays parsley. Pour over one quart of Brown Sauce seasoned with one-half tablespoon Worcestershire sauce. (Stock in which tongue was cooked may be used for making sauce.) Cover closely and simmer slowly (do not allow sauce to boil) two hours or until tongue is tender. Serve on hot platter. Surround with sauce.
A two-stage method: a long simmer to loosen the skin, then a slow braise in brown sauce. Nothing here is difficult, but the shopping and the timing both need translating.
- Buying the tongue"Fresh" means unbrined; tongue is also sold corned or pickled, so ask specifically for green (uncured) beef tongue, or order it. A whole beef tongue runs 3-4 lb and feeds six to eight; veal tongues are much smaller, around 1 lb, and will need correspondingly less time in the first simmer.
- Peel it hotThis is the hinge. The tough outer skin slips off in sheets while the tongue is still steaming and grips stubbornly once it cools. Lift it straight from the water, hold it with a towel, slit the skin lengthwise on the underside and pull.
- Total timeTwo to three hours simmering plus two hours braising is not padding — tongue is dense muscle and needs the full stretch. Reckon on four to five hours from the sink to the platter, and test with a skewer rather than the clock; it should meet no resistance.
- Brown SauceIn books of this kind Brown Sauce is a browned butter-and-flour roux thinned with stock — here the recipe suggests the tongue's own cooking liquid — about a quart. A modern equivalent is a quart of well-reduced beef stock lightly thickened with a brown roux. Skim the tongue stock of fat before using it or the finished sauce will be greasy.
- Do not let it boilThe original is explicit about this. A floured sauce held at a boil for two hours breaks, and the vegetable dice collapses into mush. Keep it at a bare tremble, lid on.
- Dutch oven or earthen dishEither a heavy lidded pot on the stovetop or a covered casserole in the oven. If the lid is loose, lay foil or parchment under it — the sauce should barely reduce over the two hours.
- ServingCarve across the grain in thin slices. Spoon the vegetables and sauce over and around. Boiled or mashed potatoes take the sauce well.
Tongue was standard middle-class Sunday fare on both sides of the Atlantic well into the twentieth century: it is cheap, and it rewards the kind of long unattended cooking that suits a cold day and a stove already lit. The two-stage treatment here oa made sauce often compared to the classic French "langue de bœuf braisée" reduced to plain American instructions, and the quart of brown sauce built on the tongue's own stock reflects a period habit of letting nothing out of the kettle go to waste. Offal of this sort fell out of general American home cooking after the Second World War as boneless cuts became cheap and abundant; tongue survived mainly in delicatessen and immigrant kitchens.