Beef Tongue & Salsa Verde

One of my favorite meats to have in tacos is lengua (tongue). I’ve realized as a child, saying it in spanish helped me not visualize what this chopped up meat in my tacos looked like before. It didn’t make me think of the translation, I just learned it as the name of this taco meat. It was years before I saw a complete tongue on a man’s cutting board and got weirded out, but by then, I had already grown fond of this meat to stop eating it. This may be the most tender meat I have ever eaten.

Now the time has come, where I will attempt to cook my first beef tongue with salsa Verde.

I had to prepare myself mentally that I was going to be handling a tongue in its full form. I thought I had it under control until I was actually holding the tongu under the cold water and started feeling the roughness of the papillae and taste buds on top of the tongue. I had to put my mind power in full throttle to prevent a change in dinner plans, that, and also simply not looking at the tongue while I was rinsing it.

Okay, that part is over. Time to boil water in a pot with salt, garlic cloves, onion, and the tongue…

Now leave it boiling for about three hours.

In the meantime, I’m boiling some tomatillos…

Chop half an onion, cilantro, 2 jalapeños, and pull off four cloves of garlic…

Place all veggies in a blender and blend until I get my desired texture…

I chopped more onion and cilantro for side toppings…

Three hours later, I grab two tongs and carefully pull out the tongue and place it on the cutting board to cool. It’s three pounds of meat that took three hours to cook, you do not want this treasure to slip out of your possession, be careful!!

Peel the skin and cut off the extra fatty gunk.

Time to slice!

Heat up tortillas and Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I got the instructions from my mom and inspiration from seeing the recipe in the book, Meat Bible, given as a Christmas gift from Erika and Oscar, so thank you guys!