Some Notes on Beef Tongue

Hi, all,

I've been smoking tongue a few times a year, with mixed results, both before and after getting the Egg. The one I did this last weekend turned out pretty well, but with room for improvement. I thought I might share what I did. Any comments welcomed.

I started with a 2.5 lb beef tongue, which is pretty good size. The outer skin was the thickest I've encountered. It was so rough at the top, near the base, that it could have been used as a rasp. To start the preparation, I slit the skin along the bottom, and brined the tongue in a simple salt and lemon juice mixture for 24 hrs, changing the water once. I then pressure cooked it at 15 p.s.i. for 10 minutes in a minimum of water.

Upon removing it from the cooker, the outer portion of the skin peeled off pretty easily, but the substrate of connective tissue was still mostly very tough. Perhaps another 5 minutes in the cooker would have helped save me the 20 minutes of razor work removing the inner layer. In the picture below, you can see some white patches still remaining. I suppose I might have cooked it with the inner layer still on, but I suppose that the flesh would have dried before the tissue broke down.



Notice that I separated the tongue into 2 pieces. The tip section is noticeably thinner than the base, and will reach 200 much sooner than the base. The base also has some fat to render. I cut off some bits of fat and cartilage that were at the base, but found no bone bits.

I rubbed the pieces, and placed them direct on an elevated grill, with the dome around 260. At 2 hours the thinner piece was getting a little dry, so I mopped it and the other hunk. A drip pan might have been useful as a shield. At 3 hours the tip was at 200. I took it out, and cut off a few slices.



They were a little charred on the outside, but the outer 1/4" remained quite chewy. I'm pretty sure that the outer portion has a different tissue structure than the inner. I returned the meat to the Egg in a foil pan w. some beer. It did soften up a little, so next time I will foil the tip. Maybe chop it up, and do a sort of burnt ends.



The base was 200 at 4 hrs. As you can see, it turned out very moist and unctuous, with a pleasantly crunchy outer coating. Made some very nice sandwiches on rye w. mustard and onion. By itself, it is so rich and unctuous that more than a few ounces is almost too much. Although a bit of work, at 1.79/lb, its some of the best sandwich meat I've had. I'll call it "mock wagyu."

Something else I might try next time is to cook the base to 180, with only a light rub. Then slice, and return to the grill with rub and maple syrup and cook the slices a'la pig candy.