Tacos de Lengua: Rocking the Icky Bits!

The tongue will have the skin and taste buds still on it. Don’t freak, you will remove this after it has cooked. Rinse the beef tongue and place in a large, deep Dutch oven. Pour beef stock in. Add quartered onions, peeled garlic cloves, bay leaves to pot. Pour in enough water to just cover the tongue. Season the liquid generously with salt, pepper, garlic powder and comino. If you aren’t sure if you were generous, season it some more. I didn’t measure but I felt like 2 teaspoons was close.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat. Cover and simmer for four hours. The tongue will be tender and will give slightly when poked with a wooden spoon. This is a marked difference in tenderness from the first hour of cooking so be sure to poke it early for a comparision point. When the tongue is tender, let it rest on a cutting board for about 3-4 minutes, just until it’s cool enough for you to touch. Don’t wait too long. If it cools too much, the skin won’t peel off easily and you’ll waste a lot of the meat.

Using a small, sharp paring knife and your fingers, cut the skin lengthwise and tease the edges away from the meat. I wound up using the knife to get it started and then peeling it with my fingers. It came off easily. The meat was very tender. I diced it into cubes, seasoned it again with salt, pepper, garlic and just a bit of comino and then pan-fried it in butter just to give it a little sear, maybe three or four minutes total. Serve in tortillas that you’ve softened in the microwave between damp paper towels, topped with onion, cilantro and lime, or your favorite salsa or pico de gallo.

(We taste tested the straight-from-the-pot lenqua versus the pan-fried lengua and everyone agreed that the quick sear really brings out the flavor. The texture and taste is very similar to pot roast yet slightly sweet.)

My notes: I used a smaller tongue, just under 2 pounds, and wound up cooking it for about four hours. Next time I’ll buy a larger one and will just plan for an hour per pound plus one hour. I added hot water once about halfway through the cooking time. I didn’t use the leftover stock for anything other than adding a couple of tablespoons to the bowl after I had diced the tongue, just so it wouldn’t dry out. This tongue came from Benne’s Best Meats in St. Charles MO and was smaller than I’ve seen at places like Walmart or family-owned Mexican groceries where it seems like the tongues are always in the five to six pound range. I’m pretty darn sure that those are tongues from older cows which will need longer cooking times. I bet I could do this in the crock pot on high for about 8 hours and if anyone tries it, please let me know how it turned out!

I thought that the physical structure of the tongue would be really weird but other than being surprised by how rough and hard the taste buds on the tip and the back of the tongue were, it wasn’t bad. Plus all of that peeled off when I took the skin off. There’s much less in the way of connective tissue and veins, pretty much none at all, especially in comparision with beef cheek meat, which I use for barbacoa tacos. All in all, this was such an easy dish to make that I will most definitely do it again. My only regret is that I didn’t think to grab the camera before the family devoured the tacos!