Once the meat is cooked, carefully remove to a plate allow to cool until it’s easy to handle. During the first hour of cooking, skim off the foam as it appears and discard. Bring to a boil then lower to medium-low and simmer for 4 hours. Next week, I’ll be sharing the other two preparations: Lengua a la Mexicana (with tomatoes, jalapeño, onions, cilantro) and chile verde lengua tacos. Also, if you wind up liking the flavor, I suggest stopping in at Smart & Final and picking up their larger 8-ounce jar. 99 cents to $1.60 depending on where you get it. Preferably, it’s El Guapo brand and the package will say: Chile California Molido (Ground California Chili Pepper). You can find it in 1-ounce plastic cellophane bags in the Mexican aisle of most major grocery stores and Walmart stores. There is a distinct flavor to California chile powder that is absolutely necessary for Mexican dishes. Those spice jars that simply say “chili powder” have a muddled flavor profile. It cannot be made with generic chili powder so please don’t attempt to substitute it. Everything else has always been made with California chile powder (sometimes they will use a combination of California chile powder and New Mexico chile powder). That preparation was reserved for homemade chorizo and occasionally, mole for tamales. Our family rarely made chile colorado from whole dried chiles. We’re making a basic pan red sauce that my parent’s use for 90% of their Mexican red sauce needs. Along with how to cook the tongue, I’m sharing my dad’s chile colorado tongue sandwich recipe. Today I’m showing you how to cook the meat which will then be divided into thirds for three different meals. He admitted to never having had it and was surprised at how much he enjoyed it. My blond, blue-eyed surfer friend had spent enough time surfing Baja to be a better Spanish speaker than I was. I said lengua, because I thought it sounded more exotic. After, he caught on that I had avoided saying what cut of meat we had been eating so he point blank asked. He couldn’t stop mentioning how tender and flavorful the meat was while we were eating. Of course, when he asked what was on the menu, I merely answered stewed meat in a Mexican red sauce because I didn’t want him to pre-judge the meal. That’s 12 servings which comes out to about $3.30 per serving of meat.Ībout 25 years ago now, I served this chile colorado lengua over Mexican red rice with freshly made pinto beans on the side to a good friend. But here’s the thing, sure you might spend anywhere between $30 to $40 for a 5-pound tongue but that tongue can be served three different ways for four people. Since the head to tail movement, odd cuts of meat can get pretty darn pricey! Tongue now costs as much per pound as a decent cut of steak. When I treated myself to meat while going to art school, it was invariably tongue or liver because they were the cuts that fit into my beans and rice grocery budget. If you wanted tongue, you’d have to go to a butcher or better yet, a Mexican market. You rarely found it at major grocery stores. When I was in college, tongue (along with liver, also another favorite), was super cheap meat mainly because it wasn’t mainstream. But try to serve me a bowl of menudo (tripe, a.k.a., cow stomach lining) and I’ll be gagging at the very first whiff. There is something about odd cuts of meat that can be quite polarizing. However, as an adult, the idea of tasty pig cheeks and crunchy pig ears has a certain appeal. Upon opening that door, staring at me at eye level was a big ol' pig’s head! Come the weekend, with a houseful of friends and relatives eagerly awaiting the barbacoa that my dad had prepared by digging a big hole in the backyard for the meat to smolder over hot coals during the night, I had no interest in going anywhere near that head. I remember happily bouncing to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door only to run from the room screaming straight to mom. When I was probably about 5 years old, Dad asked me to go to the kitchen and grab him a drink from the refrigerator.
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