The Home Stretch...

We're in the home stretch here at Salt & Time. Last week, my dad and I drove down to Houston to pick up a bunch of supplies at Allied Kenco. Whether you're a home sausage maker or producing commercially, Allied Kenco can hook you up with everything you need. Cody and the staff there are super friendly and helpful and a pleasure to work with. They do mail order, but since I was ordering a couple hundred pounds of curing salts and casings, I figured I'd save on shipping costs and pick them up. Plus, I've never been to Houston, and I've been hearing great things about Feast. Feast lived up to the hype with its menu. We were still full from lunch, and we needed to get back on the road, so we had a light dinner. The highlight for me was definitely chicken hearts on toast. I have to admit, that I'm not much for chicken liver, but chicken hearts are yummy. I did have flashbacks to my days at Marin Sun Farms when I would sort through chicken offal to separate out the hearts from the livers for the farmers market.

With the pantry now full of supplies, we finished up the last major work on the shop this week, and are ready to start production. Next week, I'm picking up my first batch of pork from Richardson Farms and we will be off and running. I'll have some pictures up of the first batch, but in the mean time, here are some photos of the shop.

Parts & Labor: Corned Beef Tongue pt 2

Sorry I'm a little late getting this posted. I Hope none of you were following along at home waiting for me. Then again, even if you were, you could have just left the tongue in the brine and you would have been fine. (Though you might want to soak it in water over night to mellow out the saltiness.)

When we last met, our tongue was brining in the fridge. I let the tongue brine for about 10 days to make sure the brine saturated the tongue completely. By the time it was done, the meat had a nice pink color and a moist, almost gelatinous texture. This, by the way, is how it is supposed to look.



After removing the tongue from the brine, I dumber all the liquid, but strained out the seasonings to use later. Next, the tongue goes into a pot with with water, carrots, onion, celery and the reserved seasoning.



Bring to a boil and let it go for about and hour, then comes the fun part... The outer skin of the tongue is tough and not enjoyable to eat, but luckily it peels off easily after boiling.


It is import to peel the skin while the tongue is still hot, otherwise it will be hard to get off. At this point, I cut a hunk of the tongue off, rubbed it with a seasoning mixture and threw it in the smoker to make pastrami. The rest went back in the water and cooked for another couple of hours.

Pastrami ready for the smoker

Corned tongue, ready to eat!

In my mind, the best way to eat corned beef and/or pastrami is in a a Reuben sandwich, and so that's what I did. I started a batch of sauerkraut a couple of days before i started the tongue brining and made a pretty darn good sandwich, if i do say so myself.


I know that brisket is more popular cut of meat, but as far as I'm concerned, save it for the barbecue. When it comes to corned beef, I'll take tongue any day!

Parts & Labor: Corned Beef Tongue pt 1

My last couple of posts were kind of wordy, so I'm gonna let the pictures do most of the talking on this one. Corned (or brined or pickled) Beef is beef, most often brisket, that has been brined and then is boiled before serving. Beef tongue makes a great substitute for brisket because boiling is the best way to cook tongue. I used the Lobel's Meat Bible recipe for Corned Beef, but replaced the brisket with tongue.*

I like to get all my ingredients ready before I start cooking.


The celery and onion are just for decoration, they don't get added until we boil the corned tongue.


Here is our tongue. I forgot to take a picture before I put it in the brine. This one has been bringing for about a day, but I pulled it out to take a look. The texture and color are already beginning to change from the brining. Tongues can be a bit hard to brine all the way through, so I used a brine injector to shoot it full of brine before I put it into the brining bucket.


Here is the tongue, back in the brining bucket. As you can see, not all of the tongue is submerged in the brine, so...


I put a plate on top to weigh it down and make sure the entire tongue stays submerged in the brine. Throw some plastic wrap on the top, stick it in the fridge and forget about it for a couple of days. After 3 days, move the tongue so that the part that has been at the bottom of the bucket is on the top. Put it back in the fridge and forget about it for a few more days.

My tongue will be done brining next week. Check back then for the final steps and to see how I serve it. (Here's a hint: I also have a batch of sauerkraut on the way.)

* Both out of fear of legal consequences and respect for the authors and publishers of books, I'm not going to reproduce recipes on the blog.

Part(s) of the solution

Following up on my last post, I wanted to continue with the importance of changing our approach to eating meat. If we follow the economics of "less for more" consumers will either have to eat less meat or spend more money. For the "average" consumer this is going to be a tough pill to swallow. Despite a growing awareness about the risks and rewards of different models of food production, most people are dealing with the much more immediate concern of feeding their families on a limited budget.

As I said in my last post, I think that eating all parts of an animal is an important aspect of changing our consumption habits. While there is certainly a stigma attached to "variety meats", offal or my personal favorite term, parts, there are tons of good reasons to be a little adventurous. Perhaps the greatest incentive is the cost, since most of these cuts provide a great deal of nutrition and, yes, flavor for a much more affordable price. (These things are of course connected. Much of the stigma around eating parts is that they have historically been poor people's food.) Luckily, many chef's are taking it upon themselves to envangelize on behalf of parts, none more so than Chris Cosentino of Incanto and Boccalone fame. If parts are safe for fine dining, then what's the problem with bringing them home as well?

Well, I know from first hand experience, the biggest obstacle is figuring out how the hell to cook it! First off, Fergus Henderson's cookbooks are an invaluable resource. Once you get them, check out this great blog by a home chef working his way through the recipes. In addition, while I don't claim to be in Henderson or Cosentino's league, I am going to add my voice to the choir and start posting about my home experimentations. Come back tomorrow to find out what will be the first mystery meat!