One of the things that tourists find most striking when they visit Porto is our ability to create dishes out of any part of both pigs and cows. In fact, when it comes to these animals, we eat them from head to toe, including heart, liver and tongue! You will generally find these delicacies in delicious stews that are most common in the North of Portugal. Ready to start eating?

Yeah right! We can already picture the look on your face while reading this post, which is why our advice is: give it a try! You will be surprised with how flavorful, comforting and addictive, we dare to say, these dishes are. So today we give you a recipe of steamed beef tongue, a traditional Sunday meal to gather all the family together. Are you feeling brave enough? Let’s go then!

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• 1 beef tongue (usually serves 4 to 5 people)
• 1 large onion
• 250 g of peas
• 118 ml white wine
• 8 cloves of garlic
• 2 bay leaves
• Olive oil
• Salt

Steps:

• Cook the beef tongue in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes with no salt added (make sure that the lid is properly closed).
• Once you take the beef tongue out of the pressure cooker, let it cool for a couple of minutes and then scrape the white, thick skin off of it, it is not edible. Do not wait for the beef tongue to be at room temperature for this step or it will become much harder to scrape off.
• Place the beef tongue on a large bowl with the white wine, cloves of garlic and bay leaves. Place it in the fridge ideally overnight, but at least for a couple of hours to allow the meat to become properly seasoned.
• In a large pan place the sliced onions and some olive oil. Add the beef tongue as well as the sauce it was marinated in, and finally add the peas. Season it with salt. Let it cook at a low temperature with the lid on for one hour and a half. Once in a while check to see if there is still sauce in the pan. If there is not enough sauce you can add a little bit of water.
• Serve the tongue with a side dish of white rice.

Bom apetite!
Taste Porto Foodie Team