Boiled Beef Tongue

June 18th, 2016 in Appetizers & Snacks, Beef, Main Dishes, Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina

Total cooking time: 3h 30min

Boiled beef tongue is one of foods I love from the childhood, I love the taste, and it also is nutritious and easily digestible and is a good source of protein.

Boiled beef tongue is a perfect dish on its own, that is you can serve it with a side. But it can be also used for sandwiches, or be sliced into a salad, or be used in further cooking.

Now, cooking time for beef tongue will vary greatly depending on it size and age. It will be anywhere between 2 and 4 hours. So start testing readiness at about 2 hours mark of boiling.

Broth prepared from cooking beef tongue with vegetables tastes great as well, you can use it for a soup or some other cooking, just discard roots and use fresh ones at that point if needed.

Ingredients:

Whole raw beef tongue (1.5-2.5lb)
Small onion
Carrot
Piece of parsnip or parsley root
Piece of celery root
3 bay leaves
6 black peppercorns
3 allspice peppercorns
Salt to taste

How to prepare, step-by-step:

Prepare ingredients:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 1
Place beef tongue into a pot with filled with cold water and soak it in for at least 30 mins. Then take tongue out, scrub skin clean with a knife if needed to remove any dirt, fat, blood remains or so, then rinse under cold water:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 2
Bring a cooking pot with water to slow simmer and place tongue in, bring to slow simmer again and cook for about 15 mins. Then drain the water out, rinse pot, fill it with water, bring it to slow simmer again and put beef tongue in to cook for 2.5-3 hours over very slow simmer, cover pot with a lid to prevent water evaporation:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 3
After about 2 hours of cooking the tongue, peel onion and pierce it in few places with a knife, peel carrot, parsnip and celery root:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 4
Add all roots to the cooking pot:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 5
Add bay leaves, black and allspice peppercorns and continue cooking for about 30 mins:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 6
To check tongue readiness, pierce its thickest part with a knife or a fork, if clean juices are produced the tongue is ready, otherwise cook a bit more. When tongue is cooked, take it out of the pot (keep the pot on burner, you will need it still) and place it in a pot filled with cold water for 2-3 minutes:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 7
Placing boiled tongue into cold water will help with skin removal, just slice skin side off on the back side and pull the skin off the boiled tongue (at this point skin is supposed to come off easily, if that doesn’t happen, it may mean that tongue needs more boiling to be cooked):

Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 8a

Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 8b

Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 8c
Add salt to taste to the pot the tongue was cooking in:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 9
Return skinned tongue to the pot and cook it over slow simmer for 15 mins:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 10
Remove tongue from the pot and either slice for serving or keep in a whole piece if you plan to use it later on:
Boiled Beef Tongue: Step 11
And serve as an appetizer or a main dish:
Boiled Beef Tongue