the butcher, the baker

    Corned beef tongue is simple enough... it's rather like the corned beef we all know, but it's a tongue instead of a brisket. There's an extra step of removing the very tough skin, but otherwise it's easy as pie. Recipe after the break.



    As simple as this is, it's really going to be more of a method than a recipe. To sum up,we'll just brine the tongues, smoke them, and cook them gently with moisture. Here we go:

1. Fix up a brine. Find how many liters of water it will take to cover them in whatever you'll be using as a brine bucket and, a liter being a kg of water, calculate 7% of that for the salt and 3.5% for the sugar. For instance, if you need 10L to cover a bunch of tongues(good luck fitting that in your fridge at home), you will require 700g of salt and 350g of sugar. If you have TCM/Instacure #1 you can replace a small portion of the salt with that to keep the meat red through cooking and add a tiny bit to the flavor. Also feel free to play around with other sweeteners to impart any flavors you like, like molasses or honey.
2. Stir these into the water until absorbed and add the tongues. Leave in the brine, in the fridge, for a week
3. Remove the tongues from the brine.
4. Cut the large piece of muscle off of the underside of the tongue to smoke separately - you can find a seam in the fat and connective tissue to follow if you look for it. I do this for two reasons: it exposes more of the tongue's surface area for the smoke to flavor and the meat on the bottom is different enough, I argue, to handle separately.
   
   

   bottom and top

5. Pat dry and place the tongues on a rack in the fridge to dry further. It can take a few hours to overnight to develop the pellicle, or tacky surface of the meat to which smoke will more readily adhere.
6. Once dry, smoke until the tongues take on a dark color.
7. Cook until done by steaming, braising or, as I usually do, roasting in a steam oven. I'd generally say "done" is when a knife easily pierces the meat, but try not to be fooled by the skin which will be tough much longer than everything else. Poke from the underside.
8. Peel the skin off of the tongue once cool enough to handle. With lamb tongues, for instance, this could be done by hand but in the case of beef you will pretty much need to do all of the trimming with a knife. You'll know you missed some of the skin if your first bite is as a chewy as a rubber tire.

cooked

What To Do With This
    My tongues usually get sliced thin and put on a plate of mixed meats with condiments. It could also serve as the meat component of a breakfast hash or be chopped up and used in taco filling.

Also use the smoky scraps from trimming the skin in a stock of some sort as you would use a ham bone for your split-pea soup. Reduce waste and eat better!