Today’s installment of my exploration of organ meats features: cow tongue!

I used beef tongue from US Wellness Meats. Eating beef tongue is a part of eating “nose-to-tail”. Making sure that none of the animal goes to waste is more ethical than eating only your favorite parts and discarding the rest. Beef tongue contains folate, selenium, iron, potassium, niacin, phosphorus and zinc.

The ick factor for tongue isn’t so much the taste, smell, or texture like it is for other organ meats such as liver. The ick is all in the looks. Until you have peeled the skin off and chopped up the meat, tongue looks like, well, a tongue. But don’t let that deter you. The taste is well worth it in the end.

Tongue is a muscle, so its flavor is similar to that of other muscle meats. Tongue contains a lot of fat in the form of very fine marbling. This adds a wonderful richness to the meat.

I’ve actually tasted, and enjoyed, beef tongue before. I was 21 years old and visiting a Korean barbeque restaurant – the kind where you cook your own food on a little barbeque at your table. That tongue was already peeled and it was very thinly sliced. It looked like any other meat, and it tasted great! I was sharing that meal with a group of scientists from various places all around the world. I was sitting near a woman – I can’t remember her name or exactly where she was from, but I think it was somewhere in Eastern Europe – who told me the tongue in the restaurant was ok, but that she grew up eating tongue that had been boiled for hours, and she liked that better.

As I was getting ready to try my hand at cooking tongue, I knew I wouldn’t be able to slice it thinly enough to barbeque it or pan fry it. Even though tongue has a high fat content, it can become tough if it isn’t properly cooked because the tongue muscle gets a lot of use. Since I knew I would be going the simmering route, I opted for another popular tongue recipe – lengua tacos. Some recipes I found crisp up the tongue pieces by pan frying them after their initial simmer. Others continued simmering them after adding the taco seasonings. I opted not to pan fry them because my family is used to ground beef tacos, and I thought this would provide a more similar texture.

Usually I serve taco bowls because I don’t always have time to make tortillas. This time I decided to make tortillas, and I tried a recipe from Primitive Palate for Pork Rind Tortillas. They did not disappoint. I used plain pork rinds. If you are going to use flavored pork rinds, make sure you choose some that don’t have any undesirable ingredients like maltodextrin or MSG. I like Epic or Bacon’s Heir brands.

I wanted to be able to cook, peel, and dice the tongue while no one else was home so they wouldn’t see it and then refuse to taste it. I also didn’t want to have to watch a pan simmering on the stove all afternoon. My Instant Pot came to the rescue! It enabled me to complete the whole cooking process between lunch and after-school-time, then it kept the meat warm until it was time to eat. In case you don’t have an Instant Pot, I have also included directions for using a slow cooker or a saucepan on the stovetop based on my research of other beef tongue recipes.

A quick note on the nutrition information for this recipe: When I was looking up beef tongue on the USDA database, I noticed there was a big difference between raw and simmered tongue, particularly for the carbs. The raw tongue had 4 carbs per 100g, while the simmered tongue had 0 carbs. Perhaps the carbs are in the skin that gets peeled off, but I’m not sure. Generally, I use raw meat info, but since I had to peel the tongue and discard the tough part where the tongue was attached to the bottom of the mouth, I measured the yield after doing those things and went with the simmered info.

Print Recipe

5 from 2 votes

Lengua Tacos

A cow tongue turned into the most tender, beefy tasting tacos you’ll ever try!

Prep Time5

Cook Time1 30

Total Time1 35

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Mexican

Keyword: beef, gluten free, grain free, instant pot, keto, low carb, offal, tacos, tongue

Servings:

Calories: 291kcal

Author: Laura Schafer

Ingredients

1 beef tongue (about 2 pounds)
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
2 cups bone broth (beef preferred)
2 cups water
2 tbsp taco seasoning
1 (4 oz) can diced green chiles (drained) (optional)

Optional Additions for Serving

1 batch pork rind tortillas
lettuce
tomato
salsa
sour cream
shredded cheese
cilantro

Instructions

Place the tongue, onions, garlic, bone broth, and water into your instant pot insert (or slow cooker or a medium saucepan).
Seal your instant pot, and turn on to manual, high pressure, for 45 minutes. Allow for a natural pressure release.
(For slow cooker, add enough water to completely cover the tongue and cook for 10 hours on low.) (For stovetop, add enough water to completely cover the tongue, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 3 hours.)
The tongue should be very tender at this point, and a sharp knife should slip into the meat easily. If it doesn’t, cook it a little longer.
Remove the tongue to a cutting board and allow to cool slightly. Pour the cooking liquid through a strainer into a bowl. Set aside the onion mixture from the strainer and 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid. If desired, you may save the remaining cooking liquid for up to a week in the refrigerator or up to a month in the freezer and use in any recipe calling for beef broth.
Peel the skin off the tongue and discard. The part of the tongue that attaches to the bottom of the mouth will be tough, so cut it off and discard it. You can easily feel where the tough part is by squeezing it. Dice the meat as finely as you would like.
Return the diced meat, the strained onion mixture, and 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid to the instant pot insert. Add the taco seasoning and diced green chiles (if using). Press the saute button on the instant pot. Cook the meat mixture, stirring ocasionally, until most of the liquid has evaporated. Serve with your favorite keto tortillas and toppings!
(If you used a slow cooker to cook the tongue, complete this step in a skillet on the stovetop over medium heat. If you used a saucepan to cook the tongue, complete this step in that same saucepan on the stovetop over medium heat.)