Have you ever wondered how, every Christmas, your mother or grandmother gets that perfect texture and flavour out of her beef tongue? Well, here you have it. This is my mother-in-law’s recipe for the beef tongue that makes the whole family spend the rest of the year looking forward to her delicious Christmas meal.
Simple and Easy Beef Tongue
I, for one, was shocked at how simple the recipe is! There are one or two important things to bear in mind, which I will mention shortly. But otherwise, the entire process is smooth and easy. Plus, other than the tongue itself, only 4 ingredients are needed.
You start by washing the tongue thoroughly and removing the glands. From here all you need to do is pop it in a pressure cooker with water, cloves, peppercorns and a little sugar. To top it off, you don’t have to use a pressure cooker either, it just makes the process a bit faster. On that note, it is important that you use the cooking time as a guideline. Because each tongue will take a different amount of time to cook, depending on how tough it is.
Important Things Remember
The first thing that is important to remember, is that you need to ensure that the beef tongue is extremely soft. Because once it cools it will toughen slightly again. And if not cooked enough, it may be a bit rubbery to eat. When checking it for softness, your testing utensil must slide through the meat like a hot knife through butter.
Secondly, don’t wait to pull the skin off. As soon as it comes off the heat, you need to remove the skin. It will be very hot to touch and you will need to work carefully. But this will save you a lot of stress later on. Because as soon as the meat has cooled slightly, the skin sticks to the flesh again. And you will find yourself trying to pick of broken bits at a time. Which not only becomes an arduous task for you but also leaves the possibility of missed bits of skin. Not a pleasant thing to eat!
Lastly, take note that the recipe uses beef tongue in brine. This means that the meat is already salted, so there is no need to add extra. However, should you decide to try a fresh tongue you can add about 15ml of salt to the pot along with the other ingredients.
Condiments for your Beef Tongue
There are a few options to use with your beef tongue. Some traditional options are curry sauce and apricot jam sauce. Although my top favourite is a homemade mustard sauce.
My Mother-in-Law’s Perfect Tongue Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 Beef Tongue in Brine Approximate weight 1.5kg
- 500 ml Boiling Water
- 3 Cloves
- 6 Peppercorns
- 25 ml Brown Sugar
Instructions
- Wash the beef tongue and remove the glands.
- Place the tongue in a pressure cooker and add the boiling water, cloves, peppercorns and sugar.
- Cook for approximately 60 minutes or until extremely soft. How long it takes will vary as it depends on the toughness of each tongue.
- Once very soft, remove from the heat and immediately remove the skin.
- Allow to cool before slicing into thin pieces.
