Home › Meats › Smoked Beef Tongue
Smoked Beef Tongue
Soak the tongue in cold water over night; then place it in enough fresh cold water to cover it and boil slowly for five hours. Drain, lay in cold water for two or three minutes, remove the skin, trimming the thick end of the tongue neatly, and again place it in hot water for a few moments. Drain and lay on the serving dish, pouring over the meat one-half pint of Spanish sauce. Add a sherry-glass of sherry and ten chopped mushrooms just before serving.
A straightforward cured-meat preparation whose only real difficulty is judging doneness and peeling the tongue at the right moment. A few of the quantities are in units the book expected its readers to know by heart.
- The overnight soak is not optionalA smoked tongue is a heavily brined tongue, and the soak is what makes it edible rather than punishing. Change the water once or twice if you can; if the tongue has come from a butcher who cures lightly, a few hours may be enough.
- Boil slowly means simmerHold the water at a bare shiver rather than a true rolling boil, which over five hours tightens the muscle and leaves the meat dry and stringy no matter how long you cook it.
- Five hours is for a large tongueFive hours suits a large tongue -- cured beef tongues sold today are often in the 2-4 lb range and may be tender well before the five hours the recipe allows. Test with a skewer at the thickest part rather than watching the clock; it should slide in with no resistance.
- Peel it hotThis is the hinge of the whole recipe. The brief dip in cold water is only to let you handle it; the skin slips off in one sheet while the meat is still hot and will cling stubbornly once it cools. Slit the skin along the underside and pull from the tip back.
- Half a pint of Spanish sauceOne cup. Spanish sauce in books of this period is a brown sauce (espagnole) finished with tomato, onion and often sweet peppers; any well-reduced brown sauce with tomato in it will serve.
- A sherry-glassPeriod tables are not consistent, but reckon on somewhere between 1 and 2 fluid ounces. Added at the last moment it stays sharp and aromatic; if you prefer it rounder, add it to the sauce and let it reduce for a minute or two.
- The mushroomsTen raw chopped mushrooms stirred in at serving will be crunchy and taste raw. Sauté them in butter first and fold them into the hot sauce.
- Slicing and yieldCarve on a slight diagonal, starting an inch or so back from the tip, in slices about 1/4 inch thick. A 3 lb tongue serves six to eight; the leftovers are excellent cold, pressed under a weight overnight.
Smoked and pickled tongue was a butcher's staple rather than a delicacy in the period the Butterick book was written: the tongue came off the head with the rest of the offal, cured well, kept well, and sliced into something that looked like a proper cold roast on a buffet table. Serving it hot under a Spanish sauce with sherry and mushrooms is the domestic-science era's way of dressing a cheap cut for the dining room, borrowing the vocabulary of French sauce work. The long soak-and-simmer method is unchanged from much older English practice, where tongues were cured in barrels of brine through the winter and boiled off as needed.