GROW: Boiled Beef Tongue

This week's installment of G.R.O.W. hits close to home, because my grandmother is a big fan of all things beef. Her favorite cocktail? The bullshot, a horrifying mixture of beef broth and vodka.

http://www.worldproutassembly.org/images/cow-tongue.jpg

Another of her favorites? Beef tongue. She loves it. Like, loves it. Growing up, when the market in my hometown had beef tongue in-store, she'd call to alert us, glee (and hunger) audible in her voice. She also used to call to tell me when figure skating was on T.V., because I was pretty sure I was going to be a professional figure skater for a while. That dream crashed and burned, though, when I took my first figure skating lesson at the age of eight and totally sucked, and was double the age of the rest of my classmates.

Anyway, back to beef tongue. It's definitely not as popular as it used to be, especially because Americans (myself included) are more afraid than ever to eat even close to the whole animal. It's also much healthier than some of the other G.R.O.W.s I've featured, but what it lacks in unhealthiness, it makes up in grossness.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Boiled-Beef-Tongue/

See? I told you it was gross. I can't even imagine eating another creature's tongue, but it's one of those random "special interest" ingredients that has started appearing on trendy menus recently, like at Public in New York, where I had a lovely, non-beef tongue dinner of beet gnudi this summer.

I'm off to make dinner...and it definitely won't include boiled beef tongue. Blech.