Beef tongue: how to deal with it
“What I like about tongue - most chefs like to work with sumptuous pieces. And the tongue, although tender, still refers to offal. I just prefer meat substitutes. I like to prepare main dishes from offal - not adding it somewhere, but giving it the main role. After all, the same tongue: it's so bold - and so delicious.
In restaurants, as a rule, the most delicious thing in them - the neck - is cut off from the finished tongue: simply because it looks sloppy. It is often simply disposed of as waste or used for personal meals. Although the tip looks pretty, it gets drier as a result of any cooking process. I just won't serve her.
How to choose the right tongue
In appearance, it should be rosy and beautiful, without giving any reason to suspect something bad. It is also important to touch it in different places: the tongue should be elastic, if it is defrosted, then frozen, then defrosted again - it will be soft and lethargic. It will be fresh in some mucus, and there may be blood on the wound. And be sure to smell: the tongue has a specific smell but without foreign impurities. So I say to my wife: "Do not ask me how to choose, just take it and smell it, how do you like it? Are you satisfied with everything or is something wrong? If something is wrong, you doubt - do not take it, move on. "
How to properly thaw a frozen tongue
Necessarily in the refrigerator. Wear it overnight - and everything will be great with it. Then it must be rinsed with running water and wiped dry from mucus: it is not known how it was frozen and how it was stored.
What is the difference between calf tongue and cow tongue
In addition to size - veal, of course, is smaller - the difference is in tenderness: beef is tougher and coarser. But, you know, if you digest a little beef tongue, it will be as tender and soft as veal.
How to cook tongue properly
I think that before you boil it, you must first salt it a little - in a 10% salt solution, for an hour and a half at room temperature. (I do this with meat and some fish too; you can add seasoning to the same solution as desired.) It seems to me important that the product is really salty when cooked. Yeast-free tongue - well, it will have an equal taste to the tongue, since all the fat in it will be felt.
(By the way, due to the high-fat content, I recommend serving tongue a little warm, not cold, either in appetizers or in main dishes. A warm tongue tastes better.)
Put the salted tongue in the water, add pepper, bay leaf, cloves, anything else to your taste, bring to a boil and simmer for three hours. Better yet, cook in a vacuum bag for the same three hours and with the same spices inside the bag. What is the difference: if you throw your tongue into the water, you will get a wonderful broth after cooking, but the taste will largely disappear from the tongue, and if you cook it in a bag, then everything remains inside.
Calf tongue boils less. And, as I said, I like when the beef tongue is a little overcooked, that is, almost, I cook it not for three hours, but for three hours and twenty minutes. And I always check: if it is too thick when pressed with your finger, then cook it more, until soft.
How to brush your tongue to keep it soft and beautiful
This will only work with hot and fresh products. You can throw them on ice, you can clean them under cold running water so that your hands do not burn too much, but the main thing is not to let them cool too much, otherwise, nothing will work: then you just have to cut the skin and tongue will turn out to be uneven. We had a case: an apprentice came and was entrusted with drafting the language - he did not clean it and smoked it like that. I'm trying - and I don't understand what's wrong, why it's so difficult, just acorns. I tried to clean it - wherever it is. So it is better to be a little patient but achieve a good result.
How to make a tongue of pastrami
The language, of course, is beautiful in itself - with horseradish and mustard. But it's also a great item. It is good both in soups, and in salads with vegetables, various snacks, and you can make main dishes from it. As, for example, we do in "Filet". True, we are not dealing with boiled tongue, but with pastrami from the tongue.
I was making pastrami with the breast, and then I thought: You can do the same with the tongue. I tried it and it worked great. The marinade is the same as breast meat. Spices - coriander, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaf - I first heat them in juice, the same can be done in the oven. Then I put it in water and add sugar, salt, garlic powder, and honey to it and put my tongue there. You can also do it in another way: boil water with spices and seasonings, let it cool, and put your tongue there. The next step is to cool it for four days. Then we cook it in the form of sauerkraut at 72 degrees for another day, clean it - and send it to smoke for forty minutes on alder shavings.
And we use this pastrami as a semi-finished product: we serve it in a meat dish in its pure form, we make a vegetable salad with honey mustard sauce and black garlic sauce, we make steaks with it - and sandwiches with it also turn out this pastrami.
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