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Boiled Beef Tongue
3 Fresh Tongues 1 Cup Salt Clean and place in kettle with just enough water to cover; add salt; add water as it evaporates, so as to keep the tongues covered until they are donewhen they may be easily pierced with a fork.
If they are to be served at once, remove the skin. Do not peel until needed.
Soak salt tongues over night and omit salt in boiling.
A recipe that gives no time at all, which is the only real gap. Everything else here is sound: tongue wants a long, lazy simmer and the skin comes off while it is hot.
- The hinge: peel it hotThe rough outer skin slips off in one piece while the tongue is still steaming and turns stubborn as it cools. "Do not peel until needed" appears to mean leaving the skin on as protection while the cooked tongue is kept, and skinning it once it has been warmed through again rather than fighting cold skin.
- Time, which the original omitsA single 2-3 lb beef tongue needs roughly 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours at a bare simmer; three tongues in one kettle will sit at the long end. The fork test given is the real gauge — it should slide in at the thick base with no resistance.
- Simmer, do not boil"Boiled" in older books often covers anything from a bare simmer upward, and tongue wants the gentle end of that. A rolling boil tightens the muscle and gives you a dry, stringy tongue no matter how long you cook it.
- Fresh versus salt tongue"Salt tongues" are cured (corned or pickled) tongues, still sold at some butchers and delis, usually pink from the cure. Those are the ones to soak overnight and cook without added salt. Fresh tongue is unbrined and grey-brown when cooked.
- The cup of saltOne cup to a kettle of water covering three tongues is a seasoning brine, not a cure; depending on how much water the kettle holds it works out somewhere in the region of 4 to 5 percent, well above modern practice. Half that amount seasons the meat adequately if you plan to use the cooking liquid for anything.
- TrimmingAfter skinning, cut away the gristly hinge, small bones and any fatty tissue at the root end. Nothing before the smooth muscle is worth serving.
- Yield and servingOne beef tongue serves 6 to 8; three will feed a table of twenty. Sliced thin across the grain, cold, it is sandwich and buffet meat — the reason the recipe makes three at once and tells you to leave the skin on until needed.
- Cooking liquidWell-flavoured but salty. Taste before using it as a base for anything, and add an onion, a few peppercorns and a bay leaf to the kettle if you want it worth keeping.
Tongue was ordinary household meat in American kitchens well into the twentieth century, sold fresh or already corned, and valued precisely because it kept: a cooked tongue left unpeeled in its liquor could be sliced cold for days, which may be why this recipe casually cooks three at a time. Books aimed at brides and new housekeepers were a recognised category in this period, and they tend to explain the skinning and the difference between fresh and salt cuts while leaving out the cooking time entirely. The dish survives now mainly in delicatessen form and in the Jewish and Eastern European traditions that kept pickled tongue on the counter.