Beef Tongue in Aspic: Homemade Step-by-Step Recipe
I remember when I was little, my grandmother and mother would make tongue in aspic and kholodets for the holidays. No family celebration was complete without them.
Kholodets always came with grated horseradish. No other way! Sometimes, usually for a special occasion, they made aspic.
So what exactly is aspic? Aspic is a jellied cold dish made from meat stock with pieces of meat. If the meat is rich enough in gelling substances – beef hooves or shank, for example – the aspic sets without any extra help. Otherwise, food gelatin is always added.
Specialists distinguish between aspic, studen and kholodets. There are plenty of telltale signs for telling one from another. But when you think about it, all these dishes – kholodets, tongue in aspic and the rest – come down to the same thing: meat in jelly.
Making tongue in aspic seems like a whole science, and the process takes a lot of time. But that is only the first time. In fact, there is nothing difficult about the dish. You boil the tongue just as you would for a meat salad, prepare the stock for the jelly and pour it over the meat.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Beef tongue up to 1.5 kg
- Onion 1
- Carrot 1
- Parsnip and parsley root 1
- Egg 1
- Instant food gelatin 25 g
- Fresh parsley 2-3 sprigs
- Salt, black peppercorns, allspice, cloves, bay leaves to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Thaw the beef tongue and wash it thoroughly under running water.
- Place the meat in a large bowl or basin and cover with cold water. Leave the tongue to soak overnight so that the mucus and blood clots come away from the meat.
- Then rinse it again and put the meat in a large pot. Add enough water to cover. Put the pot on the heat and be sure to skim off the foam that forms as it comes to a boil.
- Once the water boils and no more foam appears, add a whole peeled onion, the carrot and parsley roots, 6–8 black peppercorns, 4–5 allspice berries, 1–2 cloves and 2–3 bay leaves. Add a quarter teaspoon of salt. After 10 mins of boiling, take out the bay leaves and discard them.
- Cook the meat over medium heat for about 2 hours. The liquid should barely simmer and never boil hard – this is important.
- Take the cooked tongue out of the stock, rinse it under cold running water and peel off the skin right away. It comes off beautifully, like tangerine peel.
- Then cut the cooked meat across the grain into slices no thicker than 2–2.5 cm.
- Remove the onion and roots from the stock. The carrot can be cut into thin rounds to decorate the dish.
- Strain the liquid through a clean, tightly woven cloth. If you want the jelly to be light and clear, you can clarify the stock. For every liter of cooled stock, take the white of one raw egg. Whisk the white and add a cup of chilled stock. Pour the mixture into the stock and heat, stirring constantly, until the egg white sets. Then strain the stock through the cloth again and use it to make the aspic.
- Season the stock with salt and pepper to taste. Dissolve the instant gelatin in a cup of warm stock and add it to the rest of the stock.
- Pour a little of the stock with gelatin into a large, deep-sided dish – just 3–4 mm – and put it somewhere cold so that the stock sets. This gives you the bottom layer on which the tongue in aspic is assembled. Arrange the tongue slices and carrot rounds on it, add a round of hard-boiled egg for looks and finish with parsley leaves.
- Then pour stock over the tongue to cover it completely. Put the aspic somewhere cold for a few hours, or better still overnight.
- By morning the aspic will be ready to serve for a festive lunch.
- With the sharp tip of a knife, cut around the tongue slices in jelly right down to the bottom of the dish and use a spatula to lift the pieces onto plates.
- Always serve it with grated horseradish and mustard. Perfectly boiled potatoes or mash make a great side, but even better is a tasty, chilled egg salad.
| Yield: | 2 servings |
| Calories: | 73 |
| Prep: | 6 h |
| Cooking: | 2 h |
| Ready in: | 12 h including setting time |
| Category: | Snacks and Sauces |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
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4.6
(2)
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