Abstract: Beta recipes are my own experiments that I've only tried once. Usually palatable, they often could be better with a little tweaking - So please do, and let me know what works!



When ordering my beef last month, the butcher asked me if I wanted "the other stuff." "Well, hell yeah!" I replied, as my frugal sensibilities told me to take what I'd paid for anyway. To my surprise, the person that took the other half of my steer didn't want the tongue (that is unless they're making two-tonged steers now). Having this particular cut of offal in my possession immediately took my mind to tacos; but the problem was, I'd never cooked or even tasted them. The challenge: to fix a good lengua taco without an exemplar.

Purpose: My culinary curiosity runs deep. The first time I ever had beef tongue, I was 5 years old. One of my teachers brought a boiled tongue and a box of saltines to school and proceeded to slice some up for anyone who cared to partake. I still remember trying it and thinking to myself, "Hey, this isn't half-bad; but it could use a little mustard."



Fast-forward thirty years later: I've still got no problem eating offal, but I haven't really had opportunity to eat tongue all that often. This last spring, I had a great tongue and hot pastrami sandwich at Sherman's Deli (another must-stop in Palm Springs), and it got me hankering again for the sumptuousness of the cut and that flavor that is unmistakably beef. Not all that long ago, we had a [now apparently defunct] taco trailer here in HaysUSA that advertised lengua as one of their meat choices. I almost always go for the carnitas the first time I hit up a new Mexican food joint, and had the trailer hung around long enough for me to make a return visit, the tongue was second on my to-try list, as I had never had tongue done up in a South-of-the-border style. A month or so ago, we received the quarter steer that we'd ordered the month prior. I began to rife thru the offal bag and found the tongue there. Here's the Cliffs Notes version of the thought process that played out in my mind for the next week as I contemplated how I was gonna get from tongue to tacos:



Hmmmm... Still wanna do those lengua tacos. Man I wish that Taqueria Rosales hadn't skipped town, 'cuz I have absolutely no baseline for a proper lengua. Guess I'll do what I always do when I'm exploring new dishes and hit up about 4 or 5 different recipes on the interwebs and take the best from all their subsequent parts.

"Wow. none of these recipes brine their tongue. I know the deli-style tongue is brined for sure. Why don't they brine? Tongue's kinda blah without salt... Wow lookie there- most of the brines are a seven-day affair. What the hell's with that? Gotta be for time's sake so the sodium nitrate can do it's thing to keep the meat pink (like corned beef).

"I think a brine might be appropriate, but I sure as hell don't wanna wait seven or even three days to cook. How about I cook the tongue in the brine? I'll do it up in the slow cooker. Will that brine in the presence of heat cause the tongue to give up too much water and make it tough and/or too salty? I need to do some research."



A quick peruse of my copy of On Food and Cooking while trying to nail down the proper salt concentration for a brine of this nature reminded me of what I'd learned waaay back in my organic chemistry; and that was that the salts in brine should also assist in the denaturing of proteins, thus making the meat all the more tender. This is actually a reaction that can work better in the presence of the proper amount of heat; and since tongue needs the buhjeezus cooked out of it anyway to be palatable, I figured that I could just go right ahead and do my slow cooking in the brine.