TONGUE.. pickled.. cured.. smoked.. MONEY.... beef tongue pastrami... 3 ways..9/27

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daveomak

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Omak,Washington,U.S.A.
Digging through the freezer ran across 3 beef tongues I got from my neighbor when he butchered some cows... Time to do them up Clarissa style...

All 3 went in the pressure cooker for 50 minutes in a brine solution... Ran cold water on them and the skin peeled so easily...

Now they are in the refer to cool.....

I will inject a cure solution that has pickling spices juice, salt, sugar etc... I "rendered" the aromatics from the spices into a warm/hot water bath..


.. ..
 
Hey Dave.......that reminds me that I have two in my freezer.

Question......when you say cure, are you adding pink salt to your injection?

Thanks,

Brad
 
Hey Dave.......that reminds me that I have two in my freezer.
Question......when you say cure, are you adding pink salt to your injection?

Thanks,

Brad

Yes I'm adding cure #1... for the smoking process.... I'm thinking, it may not turn the partially cooked meat pink... but we will all find out together... It will still stave off any pathogens, whether pink or not, during the smoking cycle..... I didn't want to cure then put the tongue in the pressure cooker to peel, then put in the smoker... BECAUSE, cooking reduces the cure "somehow" in the meat at temps above 120 ish....

I really thought about when to peel the tongue... before or after curing...... I decided to pressure cook the tongue first... It peels easy after 50 minutes in the cooker... The tongue is not tender yet, by any stretch of the imagination, so it is partially cooked..... Getting it tender will have to happen in the smoker now...

FWIW, the submerged tongues did not peel as easily as the one tongue above the water level... the steam seemed to have more effect on releasing the skin from the meat...

I am going to inject it with spices and cure, based of the weight of each tongue, so it will cure from the inside out... like I did the picnic ham...

All of that will happen today.... then the 5-6 day rest in the refer for the cure to mingle and become equally distributed throughout the meat...

Then I think I will add final spices to the outside and rub them in... Thinking I will use corned beef final spice rub... still not sure about that.....

So, for now, I don't have a clue what I'm doing... see ya later...
 
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Interesting thought about the steam. I would not have thought it would make that much difference.

Called my old neighbor yesterday to ask her how she used to do hers. She got me hooked on her pickled tongue some 30 or more years ago. She would just boil hers as she has always been afraid of pressure cookers. And she said she used a home recipe for "pickling spices" but she can't remember what's in it. She is 93......got to cut her some slack I guess. Let it cool, sliced it thin, made killer sandwiches.

I'm going to be down for 2 to 3 weeks after Monday........get to have new Ti parts put in my shoulder. But I will watch this as you go and it will be my first smoke project when I can play again. This should make some killer spiced tongue.......

Brad
 
FAILURE !!!! Well I'm gonna salvage it anyway..... Cooling the tongue, after skinning, it got as hard as a wedding......... and would not take any brine/cure during the injection.... I should have known.... Inject while the tongue is warm... 70-100 deg. F....

Sooo, I weighed the brine and made a cure solution so I was going to get 150 ish Ppm cure in the tongue.....

tongue 2600 grams.... brine 800 grams... 3400 total grams of stuff.... X 0.000150 (for total Ppm nitrite) = 0.51 grams of nitrite needed...

0.51 grams nitrite / 0.0625 (% nitrite in cure #1) = 8.16 grams of cure #1 needed to add to the tongue and brine... so I did add that amount to the brine...

Now I have an equilibrium brine situation.. this is going to take many more days to insure the cure etc. fully penetrates the meat and is a homogenous mix....

I have the tongue bagged, as you can see in the picture, and it's on the kitchen counter... I'm gonna give it an hour or two and see if the meat relaxes... If it does, I will then do some injections.... the tongue is not totally submerged... about 1" of liquid up the sides... I may end up vacuum bagging this thing... somehow...

I'm using all my resources to figure out how to fix this mess I got myself into.......



My primary syringe for small jobs... Cajun Injector needle from a jar of their stuff...


More tools.... B'day gifts.... salometer for salt brining stuff...

 
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You can do it Dave.......I have confidence in you.......
yahoo.gif
 
DO, I'm watching and I think you will still have a winner when you are done !
 
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Morning..... Here's the deal..... I set the tray of 3 tongues out to warm up a bit.... The meat became "softer", more "pliable"... and is taking on the "pink" color of cured meat..... amazing...
So I dumped the curing liquid into a vessel and repeatedly filled the syringe and injected the tongues... You could see them "swell" as the brine was injected... Placed them back in a 2 gallon zip bag and added the curing brine into the new bag... Now I'm confident the cure is going everywhere in the tongues... In a few days they will go into the smoker for a 4 hour cold smoke, then up the temp to cook to tenderize the meat... I'm still thinking I will rub them, at least one, with corned beef PASTRAMI final spice rub....

.....CORRECTION.....
So I looked up corned beef rub and realized I was really looking for Pastrami... So I found my pastrami thread and the final rub is 2:1 coriander and black pepper.... I grind it fairly fine so we are not eating whole pepper corns...

That's what I will rub into the tongue before going into the smoker....

Soooo, I guess I'm making beef tongue pastrami.... who knew ??? I'm getting hungry already....
 
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