Monday, December 20, 2010

I cook my tongue

My mother was a very creative cook in the kitchen. She fed 4 children and her husband very well with plain simple food cooked very well. Until she was about 10 years old, she lived on a small ranch near Elbert, Colorado, and she grew up eating beef, pork, and chicken that her father and brother butchered themselves. They used every part of the animal they killed that was edible. I don’t know how involved she was in helping her mother in the kitchen during those early years, but in the years after they left the farm and moved to Los Angele during the Depression, she was well trained at knowing how to get the most bang out of her buck. And she often came home from the store with very cheap cuts of less desirable meat and did amazing things. A big pot of pork hocks cooked with potatoes and sauerkraut was one of my favorite.

I remember the first time she opened a package of beef tongue and laid it out on the counter. I was stunned at how gross it looked, and thought, “no way am I eating that.” But after she had cooked it and gotten rid of the outer skin with all the bumps and had chopped the meat, it tasted wonderful.

So, I did not turn my nose up a month or so ago when I was offered a beef heart and a tongue. I had put it in the freezer and had sort of forgotten about it, but Richard reminded me that I needed to cook it so he could free up the space, so I did. I found a recipe and cooked it in the crock pot.

He came walking up to the counter as I was peeling off the outer skin.

“Are you going to eat your tongue for dinner?”

We looked at each other, and began to laugh. And we have had a few other amusing moments in the days since discussing the disposition of my tongue.

It looks like I will be eating the whole thing myself. Richard took one look at the organ laying there on the cutting board and offered the opinion that he wouldn’t eat it in a million years.

How about a small taste? It really is very good.

Does it have the texture of liver?

No. It is a muscle. It has the texture of any other muscle meat. Sure you don’t want any?

Absolutely not.

His loss.

5 comments:

Paula said...

Nope not me no way!

Oklahoma Granny said...

I'm with Paula and your husband.

Leilani Schuck Weatherington said...

Chicken!!!

Mary said...

I thought it looked and sounded gross as a child, but my aunt made tongue sandwiches when we stayed with them and she was a no nonsense person. You ate what she fixed. Tried it and liked it. Same with bear meat. I fixed tongue when our girls were young and we had jokes about it, but they don't really care to eat it--it's the idea. I'd rather eat tongue than brains or some other parts. And I detest liver.

Donna. W said...

I like tongue better than heart, but I'll eat either. I recently fixed ox-tail soup, and I like mountain oysters. I'm easy to please.