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Boiled Beef's Tongue
1 fresh tongue 1 chopped carrot 1 chopped onion 12 whole cloves 2 bay leaves 1 cup raisins Salt Wash the tongue; throw it into a kettle of boiling water; bring to a boil; then simmer gently for two hours. Remove the tongue; skin it and put it into a kettle with the vegetables, cloves, bay leaves, raisins and enough of the water in which the tongue was boiled to cover them. Cover the saucepan; stew gently for two hours, adding the salt at the end of one hour; remove the tongue and serve in a border of the carrots and raisins.
A fresh (unpickled) beef tongue is the whole point here, and the four hours of gentle simmering is not padding — it is what turns a very muscular cut into something sliceable. A few notes on sourcing and on the one step with a narrow window.
- Skin it hotThe tough outer membrane peels away easily the moment the tongue comes out of the first pot, and becomes stubborn as it cools. Lift it, let it sit only until you can handle it, then slit the skin lengthwise and pull it off with the fingers; trim the gristly root end at the same time.
- Fresh, not corned"Fresh tongue" means uncured. Much of the tongue sold at delis is corned or pickled in brine, which is already salted and would make this dish very salty. Ask specifically for fresh, or order it; it often comes frozen and needs time to thaw.
- Size and yieldA beef tongue runs 2 1/2 to 4 lb raw and loses a good deal in skinning and trimming. Figure six to eight servings from an average one. If yours is at the small end, check for tenderness after the first 90 minutes of the second stew.
- Salt at the endThe instruction to add salt after one hour of the second stewing is worth following: salt added early to the braise concentrates as the liquid reduces. Season late, tasting the liquid.
- "Kettle" and "saucepan"Both words in this recipe mean the same thing — a deep covered pot on the stovetop, not a baked casserole and not a tea kettle. A Dutch oven holds a whole tongue comfortably.
- Test, don't clock-watchFour hours total is a reasonable estimate, but doneness is by feel: a skewer or thin knife should slide into the thickest part with no resistance at all. Undercooked tongue is rubbery, and there is no rescue but more time.
- The raisin sauceThe cup of raisins sweetens the cooking liquid. If it is still thin when the tongue is tender, lift the meat out and boil the liquid down hard for a few minutes before spooning it over.
- SlicingCarve across the grain in thin slices, starting from the thicker back end and angling the knife more as you reach the narrow tip. Serve warm; leftovers are good cold and firm enough to slice very thin.
Boiled tongue was standard nineteenth- and early twentieth-century household cookery on both sides of the Atlantic — a cheap, large, keeping cut that could go hot to the table with a sauce or cold to the sideboard, pressed and sliced for supper. The cloves, bay and raisins in this version resemble the sweet-sour tongue dishes of German and Central European Jewish kitchens, where tongue in raisin sauce (often thickened with gingersnaps or a little vinegar and sugar) was a holiday dish. Recipes of this kind assume a cook who still expected to buy whole offal cuts from a butcher and budget by the pound, well before organ meats retreated from the average shopping list.