When choosing your meal at a Mexican restaurant, you’re probably familiar with carne asada. Maybe your favorite dish is the tender, juicy birria tacos or the slow-cooked barbacoa burritos, or you stick with a simple chicken quesadilla. You’ve ordered queso for the table and perused the house margarita list when you stumble across a menu item you’ve never heard of: lengua tacos. Although often overlooked in the United States, lengua is a popular cut of meat in other countries and can often be found in tacos and sandwiches.
“Lengua,” which translates directly to “tongue” in Spanish, is enjoyed by many Latin American cultures, especially in Mexico. The meat comes from the tongue of a cow and is considered a delicacy, much like how the tongue of a duck is revered in China. Although prepared differently in each region, lengua is described as a tender, distinctive cut of beef. Americans don’t consume lengua the way other countries do, but it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. was late to the culinary game (like how it took Americans until the 1960s to finally hop on the sushi train).
Lengua is often overlooked, but it’s a delicacy worth discovering
Lengua is harvested during the same process as breaking down the rest of the cow for consumption. When preparing lengua, chefs and home cooks may have different techniques to achieve the best flavor, but they all begin with a thorough wash and the removal of excess fat. From there, some recipes call for boiling the meat for several hours in a pot filled with water and various spices, while others call for marinating overnight and then searing it in a pot with oil. The outer layer of the tongue is almost always peeled away from the rest of the meat, either before cooking or after. Once the meat is cooked, it can be sliced or shredded, ready for consumption, or prepared for a second round of frying with new seasonings.
You won’t typically find lengua meat at grocery stores in the U.S., but in other parts of the world, you’ll find it at standard butcher shops. While well-known in Latin American countries, lengua is also a beloved ingredient in the Philippines, often mixed with tomato sauces and/or mushrooms. Some cultures even enjoy the rich, complex flavors of lengua in sandwiches and stews. Eating lengua is just another example of minimizing animal waste and respecting tradition – something the U.S. meat market could learn from.
