Recipes
Beef Tongue Tacos: Tender Meat With a Crispy Crust and Avocado Salsa
Tacos de lengua are one of the best-loved fillings in Mexican taquerías. Simmer the tongue until soft, peel it, fry the cubes until crusty and build tacos with onion, coriander, lime and green salsa.
MYASYA team3 min readupdated
Ingredients
Serves 4 4 h
Tongue
- 1 beef tongue, 1–1.5 kg
- 1 onion, halved
- 1 head of garlic, cut crosswise
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp black peppercorns
- 1 tbsp salt
- 2 tbsp oil or lard for frying
Avocado salsa
- 1 ripe avocado
- ½–1 green chilli (jalapeño)
- ½ bunch of coriander
- juice of 1 lime
- 3–4 tbsp cold water
- salt
To serve
- 12–16 corn tortillas, 12–15 cm across
- 1 white onion, finely chopped
- ½ bunch of coriander, finely chopped
- 2 limes, in wedges
- a few radishes, thinly sliced
Simmer and peel the tongue
Step 1. Thaw in the fridge
A 1–1.5 kg tongue thaws in 24–30 hours. Rinse it and scrape off any slime with a knife.
Step 2. Cold water, boil, skim
Then the onion, garlic, bay, peppercorns and salt. Lower to a bare simmer, lid ajar.
Step 3. 3–4 hours
It's done when a fork goes into the thickest part without resistance and the skin at the tip starts to lift by itself.
Step 4. Into ice water and peel
With tongs from the stock into ice water for 2–3 minutes. Cut the skin near the base and pull it off like a stocking. Peel while the tongue is hot: once cool, the skin comes off in pieces.
More on cooking tongue: time by weight, yield and how to peel it.Read →
Fry until crusty
Plain boiled tongue in a tortilla is tasty but flat. Taquerías dice it and fry it on the plancha until crisp. That contrast is what makes tacos de lengua so popular.
Step 1. Dice into 1 cm cubes
Slightly chilled tongue dices more evenly. Cooked the day before — even better.
Step 2. Pan, oil, one layer
Medium-high heat. Spread the cubes in a single layer and leave them for 3–4 minutes, until the underside is dark gold.
Step 3. Toss and finish
Another 2–3 minutes, salt. At the end you can add a spoon of stock — it evaporates and makes the meat juicier.
Salsa and tortillas
For the salsa, blend the avocado, seeded chilli, coriander, lime juice and water to the thickness of heavy cream. Salt it. It should be bright and sour — enough to cut through the richness of the meat.
Warm the tortillas in a dry hot pan for 20–30 seconds per side, until pliable with a few spots. Stack them in a towel so they don't dry out. On the streets of Mexico City a taco gets two tortillas, one on top of the other — so it doesn't tear.
Assembly
- Two warm tortillas.
- Two or three spoons of hot fried tongue.
- Onion and coriander.
- A spoon of salsa, radish slices.
- Squeeze the lime right before eating.
Swiss-cut beef tongue, already without the throat end: weight and today's price.To the catalogue →
