To Boil Tongue
Ingredients
Directions
Boil
Place the pickled tongue in a pot with hot water.
Boil very slowly for 5 to 6 hours, until the skin comes off easily.
Leave the tongue in the water until it cools.
Press and serve
Transfer the tongue to a mold and place a weight on top.
Variations
For a smoked tongue, soak overnight and boil for an additional 2 hours.
For a fresh tongue, boil with a good handful of coarse sea salt for the same duration as the pickled tongue.
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
- Pickled tongue
- Is the main meat, cured beforehand so it needs long gentle boiling to become tender.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the fresh tongue in the fresh variation, where no curing has been done.
The step that matters
Boil very slowly for 5 to 6 hours. A gentle simmer softens the connective tissue slowly and keeps the meat tender. A hard rolling boil toughens the outer meat and can break the tongue apart, so keep the water barely moving.
“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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