Sous vide tongue?

[alanz]

My bride and I enjoy a great pastrami and hot tongue sandwich from a local kosher deli.

We've only cooked one tongue before, and that was years ago. It was a pre-smoked beef tongue, and we simply simmered it for a long while... the results were a yawn.

We have lots of techniques and equipment available to use, including smoking, pickling, corning, vacuum sealing, pressure cooking and sous vide.

So tomorrow I should receive two fresh beef tongues from our local prime butcher.

I would like sous vide to be part of the process.

Given this prime meat, what would you do to do it justice?

Go straight to sous vide? Should I corn it first? Smoke it (before or after cooking)?

Perhaps use different techniques on each piece of meat?

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Edited February 6, 2014 by alanz (log)

[HungryChris]

I have no experience with SV, but I do corn beef tongues on a regular basis. I use Morton Tender Quick which is mixed in 1 cup of TQ to 4 cups water. I add bay leaves, mustard seed and a bit of distilled vinegar and brine for 2 weeks. Then I braise for several hours just below simmer. The results are quite good. Once I tried to brine as usual and then smoked for three hours. The skin did not slip right offas it does with the braise and had to be cut off with a knife. The process was tedious and I have not done it since, but if I had my heart set on smoking another one, I would cook it first.

HC

Edited February 6, 2014 by HungryChris (log)

[alanz]

I forgot to mention, that I'm not insistent on sous vide... pressure cooking is another option I would like to explore.

Any excuse to play with the toys!

[mkayahara]

I would definitely be more inclined to pressure-cooking than sous vide for tongue. I've never tried it sous vide, but I don't see what benefit it would offer. I have done tongue (specifically, lamb's tongues) in the pressure cooker before, and liked the results.

[rotuts]

a possible advantage of SV is that all the tongue's flavor stays in the bag. I have not done tongue but other tough cuts for 48 hours

I found this:

http://nomnompaleo.com/post/12359607853/sous-vide-grass-fed-beef-tongue-n-cheek

I think 158 is a bit high. do you want to chill the tongue and slice think for a sandwich after you peel?

or eat as done on the above ref?

hope to hear how it works out.

is deli tongue pickled? havent had it in a long while so cant remember. maybe your beef tongue from years gone by was blah is it was not pickled ?

doing a bit of googling, deli tongue seems to be pickled. take that into account when you consider what your are after.

Edited February 6, 2014 by rotuts (log)

[alanz]

I too think that deli tongue may very well be corned before cooking (as is pastrami and corned beef)

I saw the tongue and cheek recipe a few days ago... worth considering.

I agree about sous vide keeping all the flavor in the bag... considering that tongue is pretty delicate in flavor, but using pressure to help infuse the meat with other seasonings could be a very good thing.

These are our FIRST two tongues to experiment with, and likely there will be more going forward.

Should be fun!

Keep the comments coming, let's inspire a few of us to cook this often overlooked piece of beef, and we'll share our results.

[rotuts]

do you have a chamber vac? you mentioned

"" using pressure to help infuse the meat with other seasonings could be a very good thing. "

would this be your plan ?

personally Id 'brine' one, somehow. and perhaps seal and freeze the other until the Brine one is ready.

that being said, at 48 hours if you use salt as part of your rub, you might get some reasonable 'corned' flavor right there while you SV

Im guessing, but your experiments will test this out, that non-salted 48 hr tongue say at 150 or even 140 would be more

'meaty' than 'tongue-y'

very much looking forward to your results.

if I had a source for beef tongue that made sense, and I did a bit of corning ...

I might have to get a decent electric slicer .....

just saying.

[jayt90]

Dense roasts should not be too big or thick in a pressure cooker; the outside will be done sooner than the inside.

PC would be my choice if the tongue is no more than 3" thick. That would finish in an hour, and I find that a no brainer compared to 48 hr. in sv.

The inch of broth in the bottom of the PC can be used for sauce or soup.

[rotuts]

1 hour vs 48 hours does seems like a no-brainer.

however, a proper SV set-up, insulated, 'sealed' once started, is very much low to no maintenance.

of course, if you are starving ....

and 24 or so might be fine.

I see the issues as brining or not.

Beefy or Deli.

[FeChef]

I Corned and Sous vide a beef tongue awhile back. Heres a link to my results with pictures.

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,21723.0.html

[rotuts]

FC they seem to want a user name and password

like to take a look at your work but have neither ....

[FeChef]

FC they seem to want a user name and password

like to take a look at your work but have neither ....

My bad, its in the off topic section. Forgot that section requires registering. I will try and copy paste the info and grab the pics. I have the originals somewhere but it will be a pain to dig up.

BTW, what do you think of partially freezing a sirloin tip roast, slicing super thin on a meat slicer, brine the slices overnight and sous vide for 12-24 hours. Think it will be similar to arbys roast beef? Im thinking for brine, 1% MSG, and 5% salt.

[FeChef]

So its been 16 days that my beef tongue has been curing.
I had done a corned beef brisket before SV cooked for 33 hours @145F and it had fell apart. It was good but i am aiming for thin sliced.

I went with 24 hours @ 155F. I sliced off a piece after peeling and I have to say this is the best corned beef I ever had in terms of tenderness and taste.

[alanz]

...

I might have to get a decent electric slicer .....

just saying.

Not surprisingly, I ordered an electric food slicer this morning.

Yes, we have a chamber vacuum sealer, but the pressure I was mentioning was referring to cooking in a pressure cooker

[alanz]

I am leaning towards pressure cooking one tongue, and corning/SV the second one.

When I corn whole briskets, I stab the hell out of the brisket and use a dry rub (with the meat in a vacuum bag, under weight in the fridge) instead of a brine. This takes about a week instead of 3 weeks for the brine. I also do not use any chemical preservatives (which really only make the meat pink). So I will look into adapting the technique for the tongue.

fun stuff!

Edited February 7, 2014 by alanz (log)

[weedy]

It takes a while, but it's well worth it to watch this all the way through:

the Voltaggio brothers do two different dishes, and Michael's is a sous vide wagyu tongue with pastrami spices

[gdenby]

Let me offer a few observations.

My first attempts w. tongue were in a PC. Edible, but nothing special. The up side was that I learned that 10 - 15 minutes at high pressure cooked the skin just enough that it was possible to remove without much trouble. Uncooked, cutting the skin away was about like cutting thru leather.

Next, I started rubbing the skinned tongue, and doing a standard low and slow smoke. Very good flavor, but the texture was very uneven. I started dividing the tongue into roughly the same volume pieces. Usually three sections. Much better results over all, altho the tip portion often ended up somewhat dry, and still not tender.

I've only used SV once for tongue. I left the tip portion in for a couple of days. Turned out tender, but I've been very sparing w. seasoning and SV, having over salted a few roasts early on. The rest, I skinned, spiced and smoked as usual. It was fine.

I've done some experiments w. doing pork ribs and "country-style" pork ribs with a mix of smoking and SV. The results I liked best were smoking the meats for a short time, an hour or less, and then letting the flavor concentrate in the SV bag while the meat finished cooking. I finish the ribs w. a few minutes at high temp to improve the surface texture. When I started w. SV, the meat was so fragile, and so little fat had rendered away that the pieces fell apart before getting enough smoke flavor, and they were too greasy.

My next experiment will be to slice the tongue into 6 pieces, rub and smoke those, and then finish in SV. The skin should fall off at the end.

[alanz]

I like the idea of cutting the tongue into several pieces... would make it easier for flavorings (brines, smoke, etc) to penetrate.

Considering that I'll likely be slicing thin anyway, there's a lot to be said for not keeping it whole.

I'm thinking much along the same lines as separating the parts of a turkey so you can cook each part optimally... no need to keep the bird intact during roasting, except for the showmanship of the "oooh, ahhhh" before carving.

Anyone else cut up a tongue before cooking to facilitate any particular goal?

[Martin Fisher]

Sure....I skin them and cut them up before curing...much the same as in this video.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJZO3rscRdc

Edited February 7, 2014 by DiggingDogFarm (log)

[alanz]

Ok, here's the scoop. I vacuum sealed each of the tongues with spices for corning and a little water. I had scored the skin, so that the spices could more easily penetrate the meat. Kept them in the refrigerator for 10 days, turning each bag once per day. Today I cooked the first tongue by thoroughly rinsing it in water, then placing into a pressure cooker with some onions, carrots, peppercorns, garlic powder, and a few bay leaves. Cooked at 15psi for 45 minutes, then into ice water. The skin came off vey easily, and I removed the gland below the tongue and scraped off most of the fat and remaining taste buds with a knife. It's now back in the ice bath, and we will decide how to prepare it for dinner. My wife and I each tasted a slice, and not unexpectedly, it has the flavor of a lovely corned beef... Delicious. I may also do the second tongue in e pressure cooker, or I might try smoking it... I will decide after a day or two of snow melting.

Edited February 23, 2014 by alanz (log)

[alanz]

I made photos of the steps along the way, and perhaps I'll post them one day, but here's the result. Note that because I don't use any saltpeter in my corning mix, the meat stays brown instead of pink.

Edited February 24, 2014 by alanz (log)