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Bonavista, Newfoundland

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Christopher Greaves

Tongue

My mother cooked tongue, mainly because it was too hot in the house in summer, so she cooked it late at night while we were asleep on the lawn, and then we ate it cold, sliced, for lunch & supper.

It has to be 55 years since I ate cooked tongue, and I am looking for basic principles here.

Various web sites suggest:-

Scrub the tongue under cold water, then place in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil, skimming off the scum that rises to the surface

Boil for three hours ... until you see the outer layer start to peel off.

Continue to boil until tender – a knife should easily pierce the thickest part of it. This takes about 3 hours for ox, pig and veal tongue, or 1–1.5 hours for lamb and smaller tongues. Once cooked, it will have turned white and the top of the tongue will start to blister.

Remove the tongue from the liquor, and when cool enough to handle peel off and discard the rubbery skin. Make sure you do this whilst still warm as it’s near impossible to do cold. Remove the rough, bony end of the tongue and discard.

I am looking at 1.5Kg or 3 to 4 lbs here.

No plans this first time for the onion/garlic/herbs nonsense. I think to just cook it and eat it sliced, cold. I have scads of chutneys etc for this first go-around.

Christopher Greaves Tongu20220208_180822_HDR.jpg

Here it is, fresh out of my shopping satchel. I see now what teachers drummed into us over the years - that our mammalian tongue is anchored to the floor of out mouth, way back, and we see only the tip.

Christopher Greaves Tongu20220208_180827.jpg

Canadian Dollars, of course. I have just over three pounds of meat protein here.

Note the rate $11 per kilogram. That is quite pricey compared to beef liver. The tongue is a muscle and is to my mind little different from steak.

In buying tongue I am not paying for bone of fat and, as we shall see, very little skin or residue at all.

Wednesday, February 09, 2022

I did not scrub the tongue under cold water

I put the tongue in a pan at 08:30 on the small ring at #4

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There we are at #4. The pan is filled to the brim, but I am not worried. This is for a slow boil and simmer and I have a lid. There is little chance of boiling goop spilling out of the pan.

Christopher Greaves Tongu20220209_102254.jpg

Hard to see, but still at #4. The surface has globules of fat across the surface, but nothing that I would call “scum” to be ladled off.

Two hours later it was at the boil. There was no scum that rises to the surface, although there was a thin layer of globules of fat; nothing that I would bother skimming and clarifying.

The top of the tongue was not blistered.

I turned it down to #2 for an hour.

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At 12:00 I removed the tongue from the liquor.

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The skin has a look that could be described as blistered, but I think of blisters as a one-centimetre uprising of tissue on the back of my hands.

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Here are the skin pieces.

When it was cooled enough to handle, I peeled off and discarded the rubbery skin, and the rough, bony end of the tongue. These materials went to feed by birds in the yard.

Christopher Greaves Tongu20220209_122801_HDR.jpg

And here is two or three litres of beef stock; they sell jars of this at Swyers for about five dollars each, so I have gotten the meat for free!

Christopher Greaves Tongu20220209_122817.jpg

I had some difficulty in peeling off the skin. With a sharp knife I sliced thinly from the side of the tongue. About half the skin peeled away as I had expected; the other half I sliced off with a razor-sharp vegetable knife.

Christopher Greaves Tongu20220209_123817.jpg

Here are the tip and the base portion of the tongue.

I ate half the tip, sliced, with mustard pickles for lunch. The larger part is wrapped in foil in the refrigerator.

I shall ask Jane to look out for Tongue the next time it arrives at Foodland.

709-218-7927 CPRGreaves@gmail.com

Bonavista, Wednesday, February 09, 2022 2:53 PM

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