Friday, April 10, 2009

French Kiss Taco



That's right, a taco with tongue.

The raw state. Say "Aaaah"
Now stop right there. Quit your bitchin and moanin and complainin and whinin. I don't want to hear that this is gross or icky or anything like that. Let's visit Aristotle for a little syllogistic happiness, shall we?
  • Tongue is considered a delicacy in Mexico.
  • Mexican peasant food is frickin awesome.
  • Therefore, it is pretty gosh darn likely it will be awesome.
Plus, I am an "everything but the oink" kind of guy. Or moo, in this case. If you are going to eat it, eat it all. What you don't eat, use somewhere else. No waste.

As always, there's a little back story. You see: we make our own dog food. We're not overly crazy nutso, we just started reading the dog food bag one day and -- well it didn't sound like stuff I wanted to feed my best friends. And the corn, good god, the corn. I used to live right next to a corn field. And I had 2 dogs back then -- darn good ones, too, if you ask me. They begged and whined for all sorts of food at various times, but they NEVER EVER went running into the cornfield looking for corn. Corn just isn't a natural food for a dog. (A cow either, but that's another rant altogether.)


Post boil. Still with fiddly bits on it
In fact, corn's just not that great a food or a great anything. It sucks rocks, actually, which is why your tax dollars go to grow it. So anyway, before you diverted me off the point -- we make our own dog food. Usually we buy some form of protein that is on sale. They're pretty happy about it -- they're dogs.
Skinned
One day we bought a big cow tongue. I cooked it -- totally unseasoned. And as I chopped it up for the micro canines, I thought: "Hey. That smells pretty good." And I tasted it. Remember, this is unseasoned boiled meat... and damn if it wasn't pretty tasty.

De-fiddly bitted

So now I am pretty sure I need to try it for real. And again, I know it looks gross. But not liking a particular food is a weakness. The more you like, the better diversity you get and the better you are able to shop for what's in season and what's on sale. I guarantee those of you that are picky are getting less nutrition by eating the 3 or 4 bland things you like. It's time to branch out. Come with me... taste the food that will taste you back.

Step One

I googled around a bit. The more traditional approach is boiled with spices. There is also a cured approach (which I will definitely be trying). I am going to go with the traditional... and maybe twist it a bit in the middle. I started with a pretty simple recipe I found on JAMSGems4u. I pretty much followed her boiling recipe, though I figured a whole handful of garlic couldn't hurt, so that went in as well.

baconified

Step Two

I took a left turn right off the recipe and decided to add a little smoke flavor. So I wrapped that bad boy in bacon to keep it from drying out. (Bacon is the universal flavoring, protector and moistener -- 3 products in 1!) Remember: the skin came off after boiling. There's nothing to hold in the moisture. And then I popped it in the smoker for a few hours of smoke

smokey time


Smoked
When it was done, I went back to the JAMS recipe. Oddly, it seemed to be missing jalepenos, which I am totally sure was just a typo. No one would make a taco without jalepenos. I also folded all that luscious smoky bacon in. No one complains about too much bacon.
taco meat

the tacos

admire the beautiful hand model

7 comments:

Kari said...

Appearance: repulsive
Taste: divine

Jason Lancaster said...

I've enjoyed tongue tacos here in Denver on many occasions. Once you get past the fact that it's actual tongue, it's pretty damn delicious. I can't quite tell from the photos have you tried shredding the tongue meat? I've had them both ways and shredded is best.

Anonymous said...

WOW !! Never tried it, my father used to make it but he was to greedy to ever share it it with me, so I bet it is good, my question is which beer goes good with it ?
(corn & dogs, I had a accident ones, salted butter corn all over the kitchen floor, my Nala live mop cleaner went to work and it was gone in no time, she did not get sick, but the boo boo looked very funny next day, I agree not good dog food)

Og Make Blog said...

I'll second the repulsive appearance. Might I suggest tacos al pastor next time?

Oh, the dogs were too short to effectively snack in the corn field.

I surely hope the lengua de res trend isn't indicative of your financial status.

Spork In the Eye said...

shredding: no, it was chunks. I realized after the fact that they were too big. I've still got a hunk of unadulterated tongue though. I wanna try it in a sammich as well.

Tacos al pastor: really? You can make tacos out of preachers? Well, then they're good for something! oh, wait, okay, I googled it. If it's pork, then it's tasty. Hey, I see that the marinade makes a deep red dyed meat. Is that the same marinade as the pre-marinaded chicken you get at the Mexican Market? Because I've been looking for the name of that marinade, so we can make it.

Anonymous said...

al pastor ? we call it KEBAB in Sweden

Spork In the Eye said...

oh, and I gotta say it: extremely excellent domain name Jason!

...and running Linux! If you need a ranty work-from-his-shack-in-the-woods linux boy/perl hacker, you know where to find me.