solly

No, not the kind you get during a French kiss !!! I'm talking beef tongue.
It's a rainy day in PHX the freshly washed Grand Cherokee staying in the garage along with the Olds, no wood working on the patio so I'm
going to bake a loaf of my favorite bread a nice big braided loaf of Challah Bread (this happens about once a month) it was a staple growing up and it made me think of other foods I grew up with a lot of traditional Jewish foods and tongue was one of them, it wasn't a staple food
or even a frequent food but it did show up on the table occasionally and I loved it mainly because my mom learned from my dads sister how to properly prepare it and cook it, after going through the scrubbing process she basically made it with the same spices as corned beef and cooked it the same way, My favorite was sliced very thin and on a sandwich !!
Now we know that a lot of cultures don't waste food eastern Europeans, Irish etc... and tongue was one of them. on the other side of my family ( my moms side) was a whole lot of Midwest farmers and when they would butcher a cow my Aunt Vivian used to make my Uncle Roderick a soup out tongue she would cube it add it to the soup that was mostly a vegetable soup with potatoes it was delicious !!
So am I the only one ? any one else enjoy it ? have you ever tried it ? you wont find it at the local Kroger but you can at a traditional butcher shop, if you want to tip toe in a good Jewish or New York deli may have a good Tongue sandwich.
Out to the kitchen to start the bread.

442Harv

I like it, and I like it best pickled. Haven't bought any lately, getting hard to find, and the cost has gone up a lot. Use to see it at Costco, but it was always a package of two. When I make it I also pickle some beef heart with it.

cherokeepeople

i live in beef country and the stores around here never used to carry it,but with the influx of 80 different cultures they have started carrying some really weird stuff,i swear i saw crow in the freezer section the other day.

Killian_Mörder

That's weird as Hell. Some cultures eat most anything that moves. But, I've never heard of anyone eating crow. That would be a step above eating a vulture.
When beef tongue's on sale here, I'll cut it into 1/2 inch slices and then steam it in my steamer. When potatoes are in season, I'll half a couple of them and place them along side the tongue slices. Also put in the steamer is a small ceramic bowl containing fresh garlic chopped, salt, olive oil and freshly-diced tomatoes, as the sauce. I've had beef tongue served in sauce. But, unfortunately, I don't have any idea, as how to prepare it

solly

The first first time my mom served it to my sister and I she only put small sliced portions on a plate with some kind of garnish, we did not question it we just ate it believing it was corned beef no problem, the second time she made it she put it in the center of the table fully cooked , cleaned and skinned but whole My sister and I looked at each other then at my mom and said what the heck is that ? tongue she replied, ain't no way were eating that !!!! she said you ate the bejeebies out of it last month when we had it, we said we never ate that !! she said of course you did you just thought it was corned beef ! well I got brave and after she sliced it up I ate it and decided I liked it ! my sister would not eat it after that. to this day if it's on the menu at a deli I will get a tongue sandwich, D.B. Kaplans in Chicago used to have a fantastic tongue sandwich.

oldcutlass

Yeah, it's hard to eat something you think will lick you first. Was never a fan of tongue.

Grayghost

No thanks, pass.
More for you O/P.
I as a teen worked at a deli, and Every time I sliced it, I got a pain in mine, and shivers.

solly

Yup I get it,
The second time I saw it I told mom I aint eating that !! but mustered up the courage and enjoyed it , I know it's chopped or shredded a lot in Mexican dishes like taco's, some may have had it and not known.
and then there are these, Rocky Mountain oysters, or mountain oysters, or meat *****, also known as prairie oystersin Canada (French: animelles), is a dish made of bull *********. The organs are often deep-fried after being skinned, coated in flour, pepper and salt, and sometimes pounded flat. never had them don't know that I ever will.

oldcutlass

What I find funny in this conversation is that there was a first someone who decided to eat those parts on their own. I look at things like squid, octopus, snails, and certain bugs, etc and think to myself how they decided it was a food source. Was there alcohol involved, like here hold my... and watch this?

Killian_Mörder

Hold the bugs. But, if you hadn't had the squid, the octopus and the snails, you've missed out on some real good eating. We have these sort of snails, around where I'm at. A coupke years ago, I tried preparing these myself. unfortuinately for me, I couldn't get it down right like those who cook these daily



Would you like an octopus with spinach and garlic sandwich?



Or squid served with peas?



It depends on who licks who first

Rocketguy

X2

redoldsman

Nobody has mentioned chitlins. I am from the south but never ate them and never will. My dad used to eat scrambled eggs and pork brains when my grandpa would slaughter a hog. And then there is rattlesnake. I have eaten alligator and it is very good.

solly

When I was a kid I used to go to the butcher with my mom, I can remember the long cooler with meats of all kinds in the end was a deep stainless steel tray that had calf brains !! I remember asking the butcher what do yo do with them I remember him telling me people like to eat them with scrambled eggs !!
As for rattlesnake I have tried it breaded and deep fried and you guessed it TASTE LIKE CHICKEN !!!!!

Killian_Mörder

My mom used to bread the calf brains and then fry and salt it in a pan. It would then be served with lemon juice. It used to be one of my favorite meals, when I was physically a kid. I haven't had it since, unfortunately for me

ben442

I was in a grocery store passing the meat counter and stopped to look at the halal section of meat out of curiosity There was a very strange cut of something under the plastic wrapped tray I picked up. The label listed it as Beef Face. No kidding. LOL
I call this kind of stuff " Food you DON'T have to eat anymore.".

Tedd Thompson

I think I have all that have been mentioned at one time or the other(well maybe not the insects). But like most foods can taste good depending on the cook and the amount of alcohol ingested before and during dinner I enjoy trying different meals so far so good..... Tedd

Killian_Mörder

We had a neighbor who would occasionally drive over to someone he knew who had a small farm. Once in a while, a cow or steer would get slaughtered and he'd go up and get enough cuts that would fill his freezer. I'd buy up a few pounds of the scrappy cuts he didn't want and then make my own corned beef from them, using a brine solution consisting of spices mildly boiled in it. I would then pour it over the meat scraps placed into a large ceramic vat and just let it soak. The stuff would stay fresh for a long while, so that I didn't have to worry about using it up right away. Corned beef is one of those foodstuffs which is difficult to stop eating, as delicious as it is In Detroit suburbia, we had Oak Park where they specialized in that stuff. Every time I passed through, in order to pick up a copy of the Village Voice, I'd stop at one of those delis and order either a corned beef or pastrami sandwich. I'd wait until I was already on the road, because if I ate it in the car, I'd be tempted to go back in and get another one. I didn't want to spend my entire day stuffing my face, in other words. That's how delicious those were

Jamesbo

Those oysters look so good, I think I'll try a dozen

Said no one ever

Killian_Mörder

They are good. When prepared properly, they're baked in garlic butter containing parsley. Nothing for those going on a diet, though

solly

I'm pretty adventurous some times but I definitely draw the line at bugs I ant eatin no bugs !!
I had a buddy that was a welder he had a side job making custom ladder/tool racks for pick-ups, one day we were in his back yard (cyclone fence separating the yards) while we were building the rack his neighbor had something simmering over a fire pit in what appeared to be a old wash tub, all I knew at the time was the smell was wafting across the yards and it smelled damn good !! about the time we finished the rack and were having a few beers the neighbor comes over to the fence and says how about a little snack to go with the beer, we said sure, well he goes to the house for a huge bowl, then to the simmering wash tub and pulls out a goats head !! brings it over and says here the best meat is around the jaw area ! well I tried it and it was delicious, kind of reminded me of the meat in the turkey neck tender and sweet, but then he popped out the eyeball (which no longer really resembled a eye ball ) and ate it he said that's a honor and a delicacy ! I declined politely nope not happening !! I never had the opportunity to have goat again but if the rest of it tasted like that jaw meat I'm in. P.S. I dont know what he cooked it in but I'm sure it contributed to the taste.

Killian_Mörder

I would prepare goat the same way lamb gets prepared. Thyme, rosemary and garlic would be the basic ingredients shared. In fact, I like goat better than I like lamb. It, however, may be due to it being sold fresh, here. Whereas, lamb meat is imported frozen from half way around the world, despite there being plenty of lambs and sheep not that far from where I reside.
Your neighbor has to be pretty poverty-stricken, to have to settle for the head, even to the point where he needs to make use of the eyeballs.
The local ALDI supplies frozen giltheadseabream [size=8333px]fish, during summer months where most everybody barbecues. I heard that the ones caught on the high seas taste better than those farmed. The ones farmed are neverteless delicious and my favorite part is the meat around the eyes and the ones working the jaws[/size]

solly

Well he wasn't my neighbor he was my buddy's , I dont think he was poverty stricken he had pretty nice diggs, I think it was either the beginning of what he had or the end waste not want not.

oldolds88

probably all that was left,eat it or die

cjsdad

I have had just about everything listed above and back to the beginning, no snails yet though. I used to go to the Woolgrower's restaurant in Bakersfield on dates when I wanted to impress an attractive female. The "set up" was a meal in itself and contained pickled tongue that was delicious. Hard to find a Basque restaurant in the SouthWest these days.

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet is Turkey Nuts. They are a lot like mountain oysters and probably for a reason. Similar parts prepaired much the same. A couple guys I worked with at the carrot plant brought some leftovers in after Thanksgiving and they were delish!

Killian_Mörder

That's something of which you might want to tell to your drive-in horror film date

rocketraider

X2 on people using everything they could from whatever meat animal they had. Often heard the old folks talk of using every part of the hog but the squeal.

Chitterlings. Everybody in my dad's family could eat one half a mile long except him and me. The old man said he had tried them drunk and sober, and the more he chewed the bigger it got.

Local restaurant serves them Tuesday nights. People beat down the doors for them. Some of my circle loves them so we go. I order meat loaf or barbecue.

Brains. While he would not eat chitlins he loved scrambled eggs and pork brains, and he liked his eggs runny. Yeesh.

Hog jowl. Actually a lot like soft-cooked bacon. Never tried goat version.

Oysters and by extension clams. I like them fried but being a Virginian I prefer Chesapeake Bay oysters, which are just now becoming readily available again because they were overfished.

Mountain oysters and by extension "lamb fries" which are sheep nuts. Never tried them.

Never tried l'escargot either. I've never been in a restaurant that served them, and don't remember ever seeing them in a grocer.

There was at one time a locally owned grocer here that sold a lot of beef and pork organ meat. This is in no way meant as racist but the black community kept that store in business buying organ meats. I remember the outcry when the old fellow died and the store closed, as those folks no longer had a source for their organ meats.

solly

Organ meats, my folks were big fans of liver and onions but not me I tried it and didn't like it, I tried more than once to be sure but nope.
now that being said my mom used to make a chopped chicken liver pate that I really enjoyed on crackers, great stuff and I like
Braunschweiger (liver sausage ) but only the Oscar Mayer brand go figure !!

rocketraider

I'm the same way about souse meat. Won't eat any brand but Neese's made in Greensboro NC. Other brands simply do not have the Neese's taste.

NC also has something called livermush, which is pork liver and souse mixed with cornmeal and spices. Slice and eat it fried for breakfast. Tasty.

And, since today is Robert Burns' birthday, if you have a drop of Scots blood in you, you should eat haggis! I didn't this year, because the damn plague cancelled all the nearby Burns Suppers 🤬.

solly

Haggis seems to be very similar to a Jewish dish I am familiar with, stuffed Derma or Kishke/Kishka which is a stuffed sausage made from Matzo meal, schmaltz (chicken fat) and flour, again something that was basically made from what was left over and what was on hand !
I have not had Haggis but would certainly try it ! The spices in Kishka make it very from recipe to recipe, it kind of reminds me of taking turkey stuffing/dressing and stuffing it in a sausage casing. good eats !!!!

Killian_Mörder

Aside from liver with onions, calf brains and tongue, my mom also used to cook beef stomachs. there are several ways of preparing it. If you're near a Mexican restaurant, I'd suggest trying what they call, "Menudo".
Here is how to prepare one of the several Italian variants:


Either were recipes handed down from their African origin or they were fed what their non-Scottish slave masters threw away and then developed their own recipes

Jamesbo

Boudin

After all parts is parts'

rocketraider

Boudin is good eating. Most any Cajun and Creole cooking is.

In the old things you love to eat thread where I was lamenting being unable to find Star's Red Hot sausages, the local Piggly Wiggly now has Carolina Ranch red hots. Made by the same Smithfield NC meat packer that makes Bright Leaf hot dogs- the only brand that compares to Jesse Jones Southern Style hot dogs, and both Carolina staples. These red hots are pretty doggone good.

'Round here we call animal stomach "tripe". Always thought it a bit ironic that a highly successful Latin boy band shared a name with offal meat- Menudo.

Me being me, and not being a fan of boy band type music, the name was appropriate.