Serious Eats: Recipes
Cook the Book: Bite-Your-Tongue Tacos
[Photograph: Jennifer May]
Tongue is a funny sort of meat. When sliced into a mustard-slathered Jewish deli sandwich served on rye, it's delicious in a corned beef or pastrami kind of way. How about tucked into warm corn tortillas and sprinkled with cilantro, lime, and salsa? Well, that's just a great taco.
But when you meet a whole beef tongue through the class of your butcher's case, things start to go the way of a horror movie. I guess that's because tongue is one of the only cuts of beef that is really recognizable, in a, "Wait a second, I have one of those in my mouth, too," sort of way.
These Bite-Your-Tongue Tacos from Joshua and Jessica Applestone's The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meats were my first foray into the world of tongue cookery, and I have to say upfront that there was a teeny-tiny amount of apprehension. But knowing full well the joy that comes with a plate of lengua tacos, I sucked it up.
For something as daunting looking as a whole beef tongue, it requires hardly any effort. It's just a matter of long simmering, cleaning, and more long simmering until it's tender enough to be pulled apart into shreds. And as far as seasoning goes, salt is really all there is to it. If you've ever had tongue at a deli, it's prepared in a similar manner to this one, and the flavors are strikingly similar.
Once you've got your shredded tongue, it's time to make the taco topping salsa verde, using a recipe from Juan Pablo Lopez, an employee of Fleisher's Meats who's been making their sausages since day one. What sets this salsa verde apart from other versions is an avocado that's mixed into the tomatillo sauce—because everything is better with avocado (right?). Now it's just a matter of serving up your lengua and salsa with warm corn tortillas with chopped cilantro and sliced radishes.
So there you have it—tongue tacos. The prep is a little scary for tongue novices, but the plate of tacos you're left with vanquishes any sort of tongue related trauma.
As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meats to give away this week.
Reprinted with permission from The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meats by Joshua and Jessica Applestone and Alexandra Zissu, copyright © 2011. Published by Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House, Inc.