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Good Lamb Tongue Recipes?


Stone

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I want to make a tongue dish. I like Mario's little lamb's tongues with vinagrette, and I think lambs tongue will be better received than a dish made with a large cow's tongue. But I'm open to suggestions.

The dish with be paired with braised beef cheeks, if that helps.

(Yes.)

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I think if you put the whole piece(s) of meat on the table, (lamb OR beef) neither will be as cheerfully received as if one were to slice the meat out of sight, and plate it with a little sauce. But maybe your dining companions are more adventurous than mine..........

I'm a canning clean freak because there's no sorry large enough to cover the, "Oops! I gave you botulism" regrets.

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I think if you put the whole piece(s) of meat on the table, (lamb OR beef) neither will be as cheerfully received as if one were to slice the meat out of sight, and plate it with a little sauce. 

Oh yes. When I was a kid my father brought home a cow's tongue (the whole tongue, and nothing but the tongue) (he was a butcher), and it was the first time I realized that that nice sliced stuff I had been eating and enjoying was actually a *tongue!* Revolting. I have not eaten tongue since then. Although I have been known to speak in tongues. :rolleyes:

So yes, slice it. But I have no suggestions re: cooking it (sorry). My father boiled it in water with spices of some sort.

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I think if you put the whole piece(s) of meat on the table, (lamb OR beef) neither will be as cheerfully received as if one were to slice the meat out of sight, and plate it with a little sauce.  But maybe your dining companions are more adventurous than mine..........

Yeah, I want to avoid a large tongue on the table, which is why I like Mario's sliced little lambs tongues. And the basic boiling preparation doesn't excite me.

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This is from my book on The Cooking of South-West France. It comes from the restaurant La Tupina in Bordeaux. Serve warm, thinly sliced, with Sweet and Sour Prunes as a first course.

SERVES 4 TO 5 AS A FIRST COURSE

•Begin 1 day in advance

2 pigs’ or calves’ tongues, each weighing about 10 ounces

1 tablespoon coarse (kosher) salt

1/2 teaspoon crumbled thyme

3 cups mixed fat: preferably goose or duck, but rendered pork fat can be substituted (have enough to cover the tongues)

1/2 head garlic

1. 1 DAY IN ADVANCE, wash and dry tongues. Slit each tongue down the center, opening it slightly. Roll in salt and thyme. Set in a noncorrodible bowl, loosely covered with plastic, in refrigerator 24 hours.

2. THE FOLLOWING DAY, preheat oven to 300°F. Rinse tongues under running water to remove salt marinade. Place fat in a deep ovenproof bowl or earthenware dish. Place in oven. When melted, add tongues and garlic. Cover and cook 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until very tender. A thin skewer should enter very easily. Remove from the oven and allow tongues to cool in the fat.

3. When cool, peel off the skin, return to the fat, and store in the refrigerator completely covered with fat until ready to use. Use within 1 week,

4. To serve, bring fat to room temperature. Scrape off fat, and steam tongues to warm and remove remaining fat by heat. Serve at room temperature, or hot or cold, thinly sliced. (For longer storage, follow directions for storing in recipe for Confit of Duck, Steps 10, 11, and 12.)

Inspired by a recipe given to me by chef-owner Jean-Pierre Xiradakis of La Tupina Restaurant in Bordeaux.

“C’est dans les vieux pots, qu’on fait la bonne soupe!”, or ‘it is in old pots that good soup is made’.

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Paula, that's a very good idea.

Stone, I've done lambs tongues (boiled, cleaned, sliced) in a basic curry (caramelize onion and tomato, adding water and reducing with a few stalks of lemongrass added, toast spices, add to onion and tomato, coconut milk, add tongues, simmer, remove lemongrass, add lime and season) topped with mint and pomegranite seeds along with "frites" made from gram (chickpea) flour. Was quite popular.

I've also made teeny tongue sandwiches with thinly sliced rounds of baguette with mint chutney and watercress.

Thinking of doing lambs tongues with mushrooms as a gyoza filling as I've found a shop that regularly has a good supply.

"I've caught you Richardson, stuffing spit-backs in your vile maw. 'Let tomorrow's omelets go empty,' is that your fucking attitude?" -E. B. Farnum

"Behold, I teach you the ubermunch. The ubermunch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the ubermunch shall be the meaning of the earth!" -Fritzy N.

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Serving fine and fresh gratuitous comments since Oct 5 2001, 09:53 PM

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Oooh, I love tongue -- especially smoked. I haven't done lamb or veal tongue, only full-on cow tongue which has a thin and tough membrane on the outside. I haven't found a decent way to take it off except to boil it for two or three hours. So as not to be completely unculinary I add all sorts of candy spices and a lot of pepper. After I pull it out and peel off the membrane (it's gets easier to peel the longer you boil it) I then smoke it until it's meat fork tender -- about 2 to 3 hours. Slice it thin and serve.

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Not useful for Stone's dinner pairing, but sliced tongue at room temperature with a gribiche sauce is classic and very good...

(When younger, my mom always told us we were having "ham" when she served tongue. I had quite a shock the first time I saw her peeling the tongue...)

Edited by ludja (log)

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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This is from my book on The Cooking of South-West France. It comes from the restaurant La Tupina in Bordeaux. Serve warm, thinly sliced, with Sweet and Sour Prunes as a first course.

...

Just noticed in re-reading the sweet and sour prune accompaniment; that sounds delicious. :smile:

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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i have had tongue quite a few time and always thought of only cow.  maybe this should be under too stupid to ask BUT is the differenece between lamb tongue and cow tongue as distict as between beef and lamb ?

The lambs tongue I've had at Babbo are small, subtly musky slices of meat. Picture a lambs tongue, brown, about an inch long, that has been sliced horizontally. The cow's tongue i've had, always as deli meat, was paper-thin sliced and tasted somewhere between corned beef and salami. Very different.

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The lambs tongue I've had at Babbo are small, subtly musky slices of meat.  Picture a lambs tongue, brown, about an inch long, that has been sliced horizontally.  The cow's tongue i've had, always as deli meat, was paper-thin sliced and tasted somewhere between corned beef and salami.  Very different.

Ok, that sounds really, really good (the deli meat description). I've never had tongue, my mother could barely stomach cooking nicely packaged bits of meat that bore no trace of their origin as a once living being, much less something that LOOKED like part of an animal, or smelled especially like an animal (cooking pork chops make her vomit! she claims she can smell the blood from the rare steak on a diner's plate across the restaurant! cooked fish with their heads on make her pass out!).

Anyway, back to the point. I wanna know what kind of texture beef tongue has. I should just try it, I know, but despite having a fairly open mind about such things, the memory of being licked by a cow eating lettuce out of my hand keeps coming back to the surface...so hot, so very, very, very slimey. I know that I like the flavor of beef, but I can be iffy on textures. And what should I be looking for at the market? Any tips on what to avoid in a beef tongue? How much of the membrane will need to come off after the boiling? Will it just be obvious? Must learn to cook more organ meats, just because I can, if for no other reason.

Gourmet Anarchy

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Although repulsive in its own right, tongue is technically not an organ meat.

Huh. In my original post I thought I wrote organish (a word I'm assuming is not really a word, but is meant by me to convey the "not-an-organ-but-disgusting + organ meats). Oh well, yep, I guess I should really just amend that to meat usually cast off and thrown into the pet food bin by most Americans. Hell, my mom won't even let my sister's dog knowingly eat offal. Seriously, tried to send the dog some dried tripe and a dried bull's penis (aka a Macho Stick), and my mom freaked out and wouldn't let me send them.

Anyway, thanks for the clarification.

Gourmet Anarchy

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Another nice way to eat boiled tongue (one of my favorite parts of any grass eating mammal) is with an Italian green sauce (capers, herbs, anchovies). If you boil the tongues, save the liquid it makes a great braising or risotti stock.

You non-tongue eaters are missing out...tongue has one of the lovliest textures and tastes, try it if you get a chance. I would describe the texture as velvety and the taste as rich and sort of like what happens when you suck on a chicken wingtip, but not chicken. The raw tongue does start out sorta slimy, but that goes away with cooking, and it's pretty obvious about what membrany parts need to be pulled off. But I would start with letting someone else cook it for you first, seeing the raw tongue in all its tastebud glory can be rough the first time around.

regards,

trillium

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Another nice way to eat boiled tongue (one of my favorite parts of any grass eating mammal) is with an Italian green sauce (capers, herbs, anchovies).  If you boil the tongues, save the liquid it makes a great braising or risotti stock.

You non-tongue eaters are missing out...tongue has one of the lovliest textures and tastes, try it if you get a chance.  I would describe the texture as velvety and the taste as rich and sort of like what happens when you suck on a chicken wingtip, but not chicken.  The raw tongue does start out sorta slimy, but that goes away with cooking, and it's pretty obvious about what membrany parts need to be pulled off.  But I would start with letting someone else cook it for you first, seeing the raw tongue in all its tastebud glory can be rough the first time around.

regards,

trillium

Thank you. I think I may try to cook it myself the first time, though, mostly because I can't imagine anyone else who would do it for me (my family cooks very little meat). just won't let my husband see it before cooking (he who has to leave the house when I de-bone a chicken). As long as I know that the end result will not have a slimey texture, I think I can handle it. I say that now, before I've purchased the beast. I'm not sure yet how I'll prepare it after boiling, but I'll keep reading for ideas. Thanks again.

Gourmet Anarchy

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Thank you. I think I may try to cook it myself the first time, though, mostly because I can't imagine anyone else who would do it for me (my family cooks very little meat). just won't let my husband see it before cooking (he who has to leave the house when I de-bone a chicken). As long as I know that the end result will not have a slimey texture, I think I can handle it. I say that now, before I've purchased the beast. I'm not sure yet how I'll prepare it after boiling, but I'll keep reading for ideas. Thanks again.

I meant eat it in a restaurant or from a taco stand (my favorite sort of tacos are tongue tacos). Once I started eating and loving it, then I could cook it. But hey, if you are the brave sort, go right ahead! It won't be slimey.

regards,

trillium

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  • 3 weeks later...

Growing up in Hong Kong, I remember two tongue dishes that regularly appeared on the table. One was a cow's tongue dish braised in red wine and served with pasta, and the other was a Chinese pigs' tongue dish that was also braised with carrots and onions (from what I remember). As the weather turned cooler, I've been craving these dishes. I can probably simulate the cow's tongue pasta dish fairly decently, but I haven't a clue on the pigs' tongue dish. I rang up my Mom to ask her recently, and it turns out it had always been made by another family member, who unfortunately, is no longer reachable.

So, I turn to you for your recipes and suggestions, fellow e-gulleteers! What are your thoughts on tongue? When cooking tongue, should I blanch it first and scrap off the 'buds? Any other technique?

klink edit: I've merged the thread Got Tongue? with the earlier tongue thread.

Cognito ergo consume - Satchel Pooch, Get Fuzzy

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I like to corn it then cook like corned beef. Peel slice and serve. Save some for sandwiches.

Bruce Frigard

Quality control Taster, Château D'Eau Winery

"Free time is the engine of ingenuity, creativity and innovation"

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

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Winesonoma, please elaborate on "corning" process if posible?

It's soaking for about 2 weeks in a brine solution with corning spices see this page. http://ct.essortment.com/howtomakecorn_rlgm.htm

Bruce Frigard

Quality control Taster, Château D'Eau Winery

"Free time is the engine of ingenuity, creativity and innovation"

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

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  • 3 years later...

Also try a Chinese style braise with soy sauce, rice wine, star anise, sichuan peppercorn and whatever else you like. But does anyone know how to braise it until it gets really tender? How long does it take?

I will try the confit technique, sounds promising.

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