Pork Tongue: Part 2

There are a few ways to cook tongue. For the recipe in part one of this post I poached the tongue. I also have used a pressure cooker (45 minutes at 15 lbs). Yet a third way is a slow cooker. Tried and true. The curry recipe I used is actually written for goat meat, but it worked really wonderfully for the tongue, too. 

To cook the tongues, I put them in a crock pot water (just enough to cover), a few shakes of worcestershire, a cup of dry white wine I happened to have open in the fridge, a diced onion, half a chopped green pepper, and a couple bay leaves. I let it cook all day while I was at work. After they are done, they look like this:

Pork tongues right after they have come out of the crock pot. You can see in the photo that the skin hangs on them like soft paper. This is the best time to peel them because the skin will come off easily.

Discard the cooking liquid or reserve it as broth for another dish. Peel the tongues while they are still warm so the skin comes off fairly easily. Then slice them against the grain in thin oval slices. Put the sliced tongue back in the crock pot to await the other ingredients (below).

Cooked, peeled, and sliced pork tongue.

Jamaican Pork Tongue Curry

Ingredients
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp black mustard seed
1 onion, chopped
6-8 Tbsp curry powder
1 tsp allspice powder (this is what makes it Jamaican)
2 tsp ground coriander seed
2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced
4-5 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 can coconut milk
1 15-oz can diced tomatoes
2-3 cooked, peeled, and sliced pork tongues
salt to taste
3-4 c. water
5 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

Heat the oil in a deep saute pan. Add the mustard seed and curry powder. When the mustard seed begins to pop, add the allspice, coriander, ginger, garlic, and onion. Cook a few minutes, until the onion is clear and rendered. Add the coconut milk and tomatoes and salt to taste. Stir and heat thoroughly. Add this curry mixture to the sliced tongue in the crock pot. Add the water and let cook for 2-3 hours. Add the potatoes in the last hour of cooking. Serve over rice and enjoy. 

As with most dishes you might bring home from your favorite Indian restaurant, the leftovers just get better as they sit in the fridge, and the same is true for this dish. You won't believe you made it yourself. It's that good. 

Pork Tongue: Part 1

I am most familiar with beef tongue, and only just recently tried pork tongue for the first time: pickled and sliced in gelatin (see picture in a previous post), a preparation that seemed best suited for eating in a sandwich with a little mayo. Simple and delicious, not the least bit objectionable.

Because I knew I was a big tongue fan, I didn't have any hesitation about buying several extra pig tongues back when we ordered the whole hog from the Stecs in November. I bought all the tongues she had, about 25 in all. So this week I defrosted six of them and decided to try a few different recipes. In this post, I'll describe how I brined three of them and then cooked them for a Hungarian potato dumpling soup. In part two of this post, I'll describe how I made the other three tongues into a curry stew and an appetizer.

Brining is the process of letting meat sit in a seasoned salt-water mixture in the refrigerator for the purpose of helping it retain juice and flavor through the cooking process. It can also can help take the edge off of stronger-flavored cut of meat. I had never brined anything before. What I will say is that it takes some planning. In fact, I have spent probably four days preparing these dishes, so it's not something I could have decided to do on the fly for company on the same day. That said, if you prepare the tongues ahead of time and get them cooked, peeled, and refrigerated, you could whip up a dish with them in very little time.

My brining recipe came from the book called Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal by Jennifer McLagan. It's a basic brine that could be used with other animal parts besides just tongue.

Basic Brine

Ingredients
8 oz salt
1 c. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. toasted coriander seeds, crushed/ground
1 Tbsp. black peppercorns, crushed/ground
1/2 tsp allspice berries, crushed/ground
1/2 tsp juniper berries, crushed/ground (I had this on hand because I use it in dry curing)
4 cloves garlic, crushed
4 large sprigs fresh thyme (I substituted rosemary because I didn't have thyme)
4 fresh bay leaves
1 gallon water

Put half of the water and all the seasonings in a stock pot and bring to a boil, stirring while it's coming up to temperature to dissolve the sugar and salt. Let boil for two minutes and then remove from the heat. Put in a glass container and add the other half of the water. Put in the refrigerator to cool. Meat should be put in COLD brine, not hot.

Three pork tongues after brining and prior to poaching.

To brine:
McLagan says the brining time is determined by the size of the cut of the meat. For tongues, she recommends 1/2 to 1 day. Put them in a bowl, cover with the cold brine, put a heavy bowl over them to keep the meat submerged, and put in the refrigerator. When they are done, remove them from the brine and rinse them very well in running water. Set aside for cooking.

To poach:
After brining, I cooked the tongues in a large sauce pan in a simple broth consisting of water (enough to cover the tongues), a diced onion, a couple bay leaves, a couple teaspoons of salt, couple pinches of pepper, a chopped carrot, one stalk of celery (chopped), half of a green pepper (chopped), and a clove of garlic. Simmer them for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

Remove the tongues from the broth and reserve the liquid plus vegetables for the soup. Peel the skin off the tongues as soon as they are cool enough to handle them and trim any obvious pieces of fat. Don't wait to peel them after they are cold because the skin becomes a real bear to remove. You'll be surprised how soft the tongue feels in your hands. This is an indicator of the treat you're about to enjoy. It's a really fine, delicate texture unlike any other cut on the animal.

Cutting up the tongue seems to be pretty consistent across recipes. That is to say, all the ones I have seen say to cut across the grain in thin, oval slices. You could also chop the meat up, but I think you lose some of the eating experience if you do it that way.

Hungarian Sour Soup with Pork Tongue and Potato Dumplings

Soup Ingredients
3-4 cooked, peeled, and sliced pork tongues
1 medium onion
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp of olive oil
3 bay leaves
1 Tbsp paprika
1 Tbsp flour
salt and pepper to taste
fresh chopped parsley, garnish
vinegar, garnish
sour cream, garnish

Dumpling Ingredients
2 medium potatoes, peeled
3 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp semolina flour (the kind used to make pasta)
1 small egg
pinch salt

For the soup, saute the onions and garlic in the oil until clear. Add the flour and paprika to make a roux. Add the sliced tongue and the liquid (plus the onions, celery, etc) that the tongues were cooked in. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for about 20 minutes. For the dumplings, boil the potatoes until soft. Drain, smash, and add the other dumpling ingredients. Depending on the consistency of the dumpling dough, you can either roll it into balls or, like me, use a small cookie dough scoop to form and put directly in the broth. Add the dumplings to the soup and simmer for another 20 minutes. Serve and garnish with parsley, sour cream, and sprinkle with a good vinegar if desired.

The finished soup, pre-garnish.

The sour cream and vinegar garnishes are really important. The sour cream gives it an added creaminess and the vinegar gives it a little kick. And you could use pretty much any good vinegar, even a spicy one. The tongue is unbelievably velvety. Kyle said it was "very good," adding that it was very hearty. Pretty much what you would expect from eastern Europeans!

Getting Down to Business

This being an odd bits blog, you were probably starting to wonder when or if I'll ever get around to cooking any odd bits. The truth is I've been working my way up to it. Slowly. Not only am I being careful about how I acquire the odd bits (which takes time), but there's also my subconscious to deal with. Despite my high level of interest, I'm nervous about what I'll discover once I have a dish of odd-bits meat sitting in front of me. Deep down I still harbor all the negative meat-tasting experiences I've had in my life. This morning, while I was eating breakfast, I thought it would be no problem to thumb through one of my odd-bits cookbooks to find a recipe for my next cooking adventure. I have butchered. I have discussed the indelicate topic of slaughtering over lunch with strangers. Surely looking through a harmless book with tripe recipes while eating won't affect me, right? But within minutes I was no longer interested in finishing my breakfast. OK. So I am not that tough.

I feel really good about where I'm getting my meat, which is key for me to feel good about cooking (and eating) the odd bits. Freshness and knowing the source of your meat (and organs) is paramount for safety and for the best flavor experience possible, and I believe I have achieved that. My rational self says there is nothing to fear. So we push on.

As I said, I am going slowly, which for me means starting with organs I am already a little familiar with. I was served beef liver and onions (ketchup on the side) a few times when I was little (bleck), which in retrospect seems odd to me. I don't remember my mom or dad being a huge fan of liver, can't imagine them thinking we, as kids, would take to it. And we didn't have it enough to make me think we ate it because we couldn't afford other, more expensive cuts. Thinking even further back, liver was the bait we tied to the end of our lines to catch crawdads at Lake Jacomo. So versatile, this meat. Yum!

Liver did not come back into my life until I was in my late teens. I ate liver pâté while on a student exchange to Germany. I came back to the States and instantly fell in love with Braunschweiger liverwurst. I couldn't understand how too much of it could possibly be bad for you!

So having already established a rapport with this dish but never having made it myself before, I have decided to make pâté for this week's odd-bit cooking challenge. 

I will again invoke my cousin Bill's name (his contributions to this odd-bits adventure are truly too numerous to count) since he is the one who brought this recipe by Jacque Pépin to my attention. It actually calls for chicken livers, but because I have not yet established a sustainable/organic supply of these, I am going to use the pig liver that came with the pig we butchered a couple months ago. As a result, you can see I took some liberties with the title of the recipe. Bill was right about this pâté. I had no idea it could be this mellow, delicate, and aromatic. And easy! Holy mackerel. Preparation takes a total of about 10 minutes. 

Choose-Your-Liver Pâté

1/2 lb. of liver(s), well-trimmed
1/2 small onion, thinly sliced
1-5 cloves garlic, smashed
3-4 bay leaves, whole
1-3 tsp. thyme or rosemary, leaves
salt to taste
1/2 c. water
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter at room temp
2 tsp cognac or whiskey (I used white wine)
pepper (to taste)
toasted baguette slices or crackers

Pâté ingredients simmering away on the stove, pre-food processor.

The recipe recommends choosing "paler" livers if you have the choice, since these will have a mellower flavor than the deep red ones. Combine the liver(s), onion, garlic, bay leaf(ves), thyme/rosemary, and 1/2 tsp salt in a sauce pan. Add the water and bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce the heat, and stir occasionally for about 3 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand covered for 5 minutes.

Discard the bay leaves. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the liver, onions, and garlic into a food processor and process until coursely pureed. With the machine on add the butter 2 Tbsp at a time until fully incorporated. Add the cognac/whiskey/wine and season with salt and pepper to taste until completely smooth. Pour into ramekins. Press a piece of plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the pâté and refrigerate until firm. Serve chilled.

The finished pâté spread onto toasted, thinly sliced homemade birdseed bread. Cooking it is the fast part; it's waiting for it to chill and firm up so you can eat it that takes so dang long!

After making it, I now understand why it could be so bad for you. It is incredibly rich with all that butter, but that's also what makes it so luxurious and smooth, a really wonderful way to treat yourself from time to time. My favorite way to eat it is slathered in a baguette with nothing else. There is enough bread to completely take the edge off but leaves enough of that distinct taste that lets you know you're eating something really special. In a future version of this, I will add more rosemary. I did not do the leaves as the recipe calls for. Instead I took dried rosemary and ground it up in a spice blender. This would make it possible to incorporate it into the pâté (cranking up the aromatic-ness of the spread) instead of leaving it behind in the simmer liquid.