The world of tongues is vast. Duck tongues, popular in Asian cuisines, are tiny and have a small bone that makes them fiddly. If you have access to game animals, don’t hesitate to use their tongues in these recipes.Tongue stands above the other organ meats in many regards. It's not really gamey or organy, and it has a great texture. If you like ham, or if you love pulled pork, you should definitely try tongue. The bigger the tongue, the coarser its texture. While veal tongues are the most prized, beef, lamb, and pork tongues are all worth eating. Tongues can be bought fresh, frozen, brined, and sometimes smoked. Often your only choice will be a frozen one, especially with lamb, duck or veal tongue. But with pork and beef tongue, you can easily find that in local supermarket or more option is Chinatown or Asian market. The color of a tongue can vary from pink with a gray cast to almost all gray. Sometimes the skin of the tongue is quite mottled, often with odd dark spots. The color and the dark patches are no indication of quality; they are just a result of the animal’s breed.
Tongues have a thick, bumpy skin, and often there is fat and gristle still attached at the base of the tongue, none of which is very appealing and all of which is easily removed after the tongue is poached. Besides availability, taste and size will influence your choice. Veal and lamb tongues are the mildest in taste, followed by beef and pork tongue. Pork tongue often comes with the head, and I prefer it in headcheese rather than by itself. Smaller lamb tongues take less time to cook, but it’s more work to peel them. In this blog, I limit myself to pork tongues because it costs much less, much smaller but there is more preparation involved. Unlike beef tongue, however the skin of the pig's tongue cannot be peeled off. Rather, it has to be scraped off.
There are many recipes (and just as many cooks) that recommend blanching tongues for a few minutes and then peeling them before cooking. Tongue must be poached until it is very tender, and you really can’t overcook it.
Transfer the tongue from the poaching liquid to a plate. Have a bowl of ice water at the ready to dip your fingers into. This makes handling the hot tongue easier. Tackle it as soon as your fingers, rubber gloved or not, can handle it. Once it’s cold you’ll have to massacre the tongue to get the skin off. Start at the back or throat end of the tongue and use a small knife to lift up the first piece of skin. Then, using your fingers, peel the skin off as though you were taking a glove off the tongue. Be careful when you reach the tip of the tongue that you don’t tear it off. Discard the skin. Even with the skin removed, you will notice there is still a bumpy impression, mainly at the back of the tongue. You can scrape off any bumps with the back of your knife. Now trim the fat and gristle from the base and underside of the tongue and discard it.
There are 2 distinct cooking methods:
1. Place the pig tongue in high-pressure cooking pot and boil with cold water. Bring it to boil and soak in for another 5 mins over low heat.
2. Put the pig tongue into an ordinary cooking pot and boil with cold water for 15-20 minutes. If you could put the chopstick through easily, that means the tongue is ready to serve for the meal.
Serving the sliced blanched pig tongue onto the plate coming along with divine sauce like sharp ravigote sauce or just simple parsley with sweet chilies sauce to compliment the meat in this glorious part of meat.
Resources:
http://casaveneracion.com/how-to-clean-trim-and-prepare-pigs-tongue/
http://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/pigs-tongue-recipe
