Cured beef tongue

[minoanmiss]

There is nothing like watching someone from a grand culinary tradition cook organ meat . I am watching our culinary grand papa Jacques pepin He is making cured beef tongue and I must make this. Notes. Half cup curing salt. Half cup brown sugar. Hot pepper flakes. Cut to us in half lengthwise to expose interior. Turn over twice a day. Cure 3 days then simmer till done

I want to write about organ meats and the friend who broke my heart by snotty saying “ why would you eat filters?” I still want to go back decades later and explain “ they are nutritious and delicious. They were first cooked for me by the woman who loved me best in all the world. And it’s disrespectful to the animal to kill it cut off a few parts and throw away the bulk of it “. Sometimes I wish my memory for that kind of thing weren’t so good.

Instead I will make this cured tongue because it came out so beautifully.

Comments

[dine]

I hope your tongue turns out deliciously!

I grew up eating organ meat - I love liver, and can remember watching mom skin a tongue when I was fairly young. grandma loved brains and heart - as we butchered our own cows, they weren't a problem to find :)

[sovay]

Instead I will make this cured tongue because it came out so beautifully.

Pictures!

*hugs*

[ex_flameandsong751]

I like organ meats: tongue, liver, heart. They have good flavor, and I'm anemic and I need the iron. I also agree that parts of an animal should be used if it's giving its life for food.

[libitina]

I've only made tongue once (no curing, but simmering it for like three days), but it was amazing and I would absolutely make it again. I used about half of it in a meat pie.

And filtering is delicious. Catfish who are old enough to have actually filtered some dirty river water are waaaay tastier than clean farm raised catfish.

[amaebi]

How much I miss wild-caught catfish. Every one of them a lottery, so sometimes you were eating mud, but with traction and conviction that farmed catfish doesn't know at all.

[minoanmiss]

that is SUCH an awesome way to describe wild catfish.

[amaebi]

You know that I grew up in Mark Twain territory (crossriver), near the Mississippi River, right?

[minoanmiss]

I didn't know that! For some reason I thought you grew up in Illinois. amends persona records

[amaebi]

I did! Southern Illinois! :D

[pensnest]

Tongue is Good Stuff, though I have never cured my own. I am very partial to lamb and chicken liver, and lamb kidneys. The kidneys go very well with a mustardy sauce, and lamb liver pressed with crushed black peppercorns and fried briskly are *really* good. Have eaten heart, but eh. Have not tried brains or sweetbreads, not that I can recall.

It absolutely makes sense to eat the whole animal. Part of the culinary traditions of most countries involves the 'organ meat'. I think modern wealth has changed that, or perhaps the youthfulness of American culture, which has always been able to afford to eat muscle.

[swingandswirl]

Speaking as a (mostly) vegetarian, that person is an idiot. Also the disdain for organ meats is just classist/racist bullshit disguised as taste/snobbery.

I hope you do get a chance to cook beef tongue! I shall cheer you on from the sidelines. (I cannot with the texture of most meat, alas.)

[acelightning73]

Organ meats are considered "offal" - you throw away the parts that aren't good to eat. Organ meats can cause illness in some people, by transmitting parasites or viral infections (someone with a heart transplant died from bacteria that had infected the donor heart). And the livers of some animals (including polar bears) can contain vitamin A levels high enough to poison humans who eat it. So there are good reasons to restrict oneself to muscle meats (which also don't spoil as quickly or as badly as organ meats) Not all organ meats are filters, but the ones that are (liver and kidneys) must be approached with caution. And don't get me started on chitlins - that's a part of the critter it would never occur to me to eat.

[minoanmiss]

But that's the thing. My ancestors had the choice: eat the chitlins or die of lack of protein. Because they chose to survive I get to exist now. Also, polar bears are a bit different from cows. Generations of people had the choice of protein-rich organ meats or protein deficiencies, and so many of us are their heirs now, so I think organ meats warrant some celebration.

[acelightning73]

I don't even know where one would go to buy liver, or brains, or sweetbreads - they certainly don't appear i the meat case at Stop& Shop. (And I don't know of any "real" butcher shops near me.) I know my uncle, who was probably in his 70s when I was a kid, ate liver whenever he could get it. What a waste of good bacon.

[acelightning73]

How in the name of common sense did anybody decide that intestines would be edible? I can see how pig's trotters and calves feet became the food of those who didn't have anything else to eat, but they have visible meat on them. Ox-tail soup. (Man-ish water.) Chicken feet. Jellyfish (which aren't that bad) Lobsters. But excretory organs? Nope.

[minoanmiss]

Because they didn't have a choice. It was eat the organs left after the masters took the muscle meat, or starve.

I could write a long essay about the history and culture of figuring out how to eat things like intestines, but instead I will say this: you're getting kind of close to the things the former friend said that stuck in my memory long enough to inspire this post, and I really don't want you to say the same kind of things he said because that would make me really unhappy. So can we close off this part of the discussion for now?

[acelightning73]

Okay. Happy New Year, and let's hope this one sucks less than 2022 did.

[lunabee34]

Organ meats are so good! I love tongue and sweetbreads and liver. I won't eat brains because I am perhaps unreasonably afraid of prion disease, and I don't like chitterlings (and I have tried them fried, boiled, grilled, and barbecued, and I just don't like them), but everything else goes!

[minoanmiss]

I think brains are too risky these days, yeah. The thing I don't like is tripe. It's like a bowlful of rubber bands for me. But everything is worth trying and certainly not being snotty about!

[lunabee34]

I do like tripe! I don't think I'd necessarily want to eat a huge bowl of it on its own, but I like it as a component of a dish.

I agree so hard about trying it all and not being snotty about any of it.

[goss]

That person just doesn't know what they're missing out on. :b

I quite enjoy chicken liver, gizzard, heart when stewed or combined with rice and peas, and they're quite popular pub fare on the island.

[minoanmiss]

We West Indians know how to eat! cheers

[amaebi]

Your cured tongue sounds fabulous.

Blood and tongue sausage is one of my favorite things.

[purlewe]

my attitude is to try everything and that way you have missed nothing.

Altho I will say I once had tongue for like a month (prepared the same way over and over) and I used to joke I ate enough tongue for a lifetime. BUT! it wasn't curried. And now I wonder if I need more tongue, lol.

(altho if you want my lifetime share of kidney beans I am fulling willing to give them to you. See? unselfish. that's me.)

[purlewe]

HAHAHA. OK I just re-read. cured, not curried. LOL. I am dying with laughter at my misread.

[minoanmiss]

You know, tongue would work really well in a curry.

[clevermanka]

Adding to the chorus for organ meat love. I look forward to hearing how your cured tongue turns out!

[rachelmanija]

That sounds delicious.

[ceo]

Tongue: the only food that tastes you back!

seriously, that does sound amazing, and I hope I was not that friend.

[minoanmiss]

Dude, I still talk to you. :) You are delightfully snarky but you have never disrespected me in all the years I've known you, which puts you in a much smaller group than you might realize. hugs you

[hitchhiker]

beef tongue and chicken organs were two of my favourite things growing up!