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Braised Beef Tongue
Soak a beef tongue in warm water until all the blood is extracted and the water quite cold. Take it out, drain, trim off the superfluous fat and lard the meat with fat bacon. Put it in a braising pan with a few cloves, carrots and onions, a little thyme and parsley, two slices of fat bacon or pork, sufficient stock to moisten it and salt and pepper to taste. Set the pan at the side of the fire, cover it, place hot ashes on the top and cook slowly for about four hours. Take out the tongue when done, remove the skin, cut it lengthwise into halves, lay them open on a dish, pour some tomato or piquant sauce over, and serve.
Broiled Slices of Beef Tongue in Cases Cut up into thick slices a braised beef tongue, cover them with thin slices of bacon, sprinkle over a few minced sweet herbs and wrap the whole round with pieces of greased paper, folding them in such a manner that the liquor cannot run out; place them on a gridiron over a clear fire, and broil. When done lay them on a dish, and serve.
A straightforward slow braise once the archaic hearth directions are read as an oven. The critical detail is skinning: the tough outer membrane peels away cleanly only while the tongue is still hot.
- Peel it hotLift the tongue from the braising liquid and slit the skin along the underside while you can still barely handle it. Once it cools the membrane grips and has to be cut off, taking good meat with it.
- "Side of the fire" with ashes on topThis is hearth braising: gentle bottom heat plus heat from the hot ashes heaped on the lid. A heavy covered pot in a low oven does the same work. The recipe's four hours suits a whole fresh tongue; check that a skewer slides in with no resistance.
- Fresh versus cured tongueMuch of the tongue sold today is brine-cured and pink, which does not want the long soak and will read as salty against a piquant sauce. Ask for fresh (grey-pink, unbrined) if you want the dish as written.
- The soaking stepSoaking draws out blood and gives a cleaner-tasting braise; the original judges it finished when the water has gone quite cold. Two or three hours in the refrigerator with a couple of water changes is sufficient; the original's warm water is a food-safety liability with no benefit.
- LardingThreading strips of fat bacon through the meat with a larding needle. Tongue is fatty enough that this is optional now; laying the two slices of fat bacon or pork over the top, as the recipe also directs, does most of the same job.
- Enough stock to moistenNot a submerged simmer. Liquid roughly a third to halfway up the tongue, lid on, so the top steams. The reduced liquid, strained and skimmed, can serve as the base for the piquant sauce, though the recipe does not say so.
- Piquant sauceClassically a brown sauce sharpened with vinegar, shallots and chopped gherkins or capers, though the recipe leaves it undefined. Any sharp tomato sauce serves the same purpose against rich meat.
- The broiled slicesThe greased-paper wrapping is cooking en papillote over coals, and parchment works better than the modern alternative of foil because you can see it colour. Cut the slices a good half-inch thick or they dry out before the bacon renders.
- YieldA large tongue serves six to eight; the second recipe simply starts from an already braised tongue.
Beef tongue was standard rather than exotic in the Waldorf's era, appearing on hotel menus, in cold buffets and on the household table alike, and Oscar Tschirky's book treats it as a matter of technique rather than novelty. The two recipes here show the classic economy of a professional kitchen: the second begins with an already braised tongue, cut into slices and wrapped in paper so nothing is lost to the fire. Braising itself descends from exactly the hearth method described, with the pot set beside the embers and hot ashes heaped on a lidded rim, and the French braisi hat purpurpose -- the braisière had a recessed lid made to hold them. The eclipse of offal on American tables came later, with the mid-twentieth-century preference for boneless, muscle-cut meat; tongue survives most visibly in delicatessen and taqueria cooking, where lengua is prepared by much the same slow simmer and peel.