Beef tongue from the black Angus…...
……..with orange-cabbage, smashed Potato dumpling and a horseradish, Dijon mustard sauce.
A classic “nose to tail” part of the beef, rarely to never, to be found on a menu card I’d. But still available, cured and cooked at the butcher shop and as “Berlin Tounge-Sausage”, what basically is a spiced blood sausage with cured beef tongue, carried by any butcher in Germany.
Since I get my Angus beef directly for the cattle farmer, it was the only opportunity to get a tongue from the black Angus. Even through you can get a fresh beef tongue via online shopping, black Angus is not to get anywhere except from a free-range cattle farm.
A really nice piece at 1.5 kg
The tongue was vacuum cured for 12 days in 5% curing salt + Spices and herbs.
Curing salt, dried juniper berries, pepper
Cut it in half to prepare one part the classic way for a 3,0hr. simmer at 90° C in 2l broth (splash of vinegar, vegetables, bay leaves, juniper berries, some pepper and 200ml dry with wine) and the other half sous vide for 5 hr. at 58° C. For sous vide I used the same broth as I wanted just the comparing result for lower temperature cooking. Sous vide was slightly better in taste but just at nose length. Curing I only did to preserve the meaty color, otherwise the meat will be just gray after cooking. Also, when cold smoking the tongue 2 x 6 hr. at 25° C.
The texture properties of a tongue vary from extreme dense, but highly tender in the upper part to rather tough in the lower part. The lower part, if not separated, accounts for the extended cooking time and higher temperature in the classic cooking method. The Japanese “Gyūtan yaki“, only use the upper part to be cut in small slices and briefly grilled for 1 min on each side.
Peeling of the skin after cooking from a free-range black angus proofed to be more difficult to accomplish compared to an average beef tongue skin what usually is simply stripped of the meat.
Absolut delicious and greatly underestimated. The meat of the tongue is finely marmorize, tender, almost Wagyu like, with a distinguish flavor compared to other cuts of beef from the same breed.
The butter sautéed orange-cabbage balanced greatly with the sauce and meat, (fresh horseradish, Dijon mustard, heavy cream, and a spoon of fresh orange juice)
Very enjoyable with a glass of gray burgundy.
