To Pickle Tongues for Boiling
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Cut off the root of the tongues, leaving a little of the kernel and fat.
Sprinkle salt on the tongues and let them drain overnight.
Mix 1 cup of common salt, 1 cup of coarse sugar, and ½ cup of saltpetre for each tongue.
Rub the mixture into the tongues daily for a week, adding another heaped cup of salt after the first week.
Dry and smoke
When drying, label the date on parchment and tie it on.
Smoke the tongues or dry them plain as preferred.
Cook and serve
If the tongues are hard, soak them for three to four hours before cooking.
To cook, boil the tongues until extremely tender, about five hours.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Tongues
- Provide the meat that the cure penetrates and that becomes tender through long boiling.
- Common salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during the cure.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cured meat.
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat and helps give cured meat its pink colour.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cure in daily for a week. Salt and saltpetre must reach the thick muscle evenly over time. Skipping days or uneven rubbing leaves parts under-cured and open to spoilage.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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