Lengua Estofado Recipe (Ox Tongue in Tomato Sauce)
Lengua Estofada (also called Lengua Estofado) is a mouth-watering dish made of ox tongue and ingredients such as mushrooms, carrots and potatoes.
This dish is heavily influenced by the Spanish colonizers, what with this Lengua Estofado recipe uses of tomato sauce; a constant ingredient in many Spanish recipes assimilated by the Filipinos.
As it is no joke to cook tongue since it takes a lot of time cleaning and pre-boiling it before actually cooking it, and simmering it takes, even more, time, this Lengua Estofado recipe is usually served during big occasions where the effort will be paid off by the number of people it can feed.
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Lengua Estofado Recipe and Preparation Tip
As this Lengua Estofado recipe uses an unusual animal body part to be cooked, it is recommended that you boil the ox tongue first in a pot of water with ginger so that you can get rid of whatever dirt that remains from the tongue.
Since this recipe is an acquired taste, if you are going to serve it to people who are not that familiar with this dish, you can add slices of beef into the dish so that they will still have something to eat.
The use of tomato sauce and calamansi is what makes Lengua Estofado recipe tasty as this is the base of all of the other ingredients.
It also melds well with the ox tongue as it seemingly absorbs the sauce.
As for the other ingredients, the potatoes and the mushroom (you have a choice of choosing whichever type of mushroom you want) act as extenders while the carrots provide the crunchiness and serve as a contrast against all the tenderness of the tongue, potatoes, and mushrooms.
Lengua estofado recipe (ox tongue in tomato sauce)
Ingredients
- 3 lbs Ox tongue (cleaned, boiled, skin removed, and thinly sliced)
- 10 pcs calamansi or 3–4 large lemons, juice squeezed
- 2 tsp meat seasoning
- 4 stalks tanglad (lemongrass) fold and tied
- 1 can Tomato Puree (1/2 can if large)
- 1 can diced tomatoes
- 2 tsp garlic minced
- 1 large onion chopped
- 1 large red bell pepper sliced
- 2 pcs beef bouillon cubes
- 1 can black olives sliced into halves
- 2 cans white mushrooms sliced
- ½ cup white or brown sugar
- 2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 cup cooking oil
- 5 cups water
- 3 stalks fresh spring onions chopped (optional for garnishing)
Instructions
- Marinate the ox tongue for 2-3 hours in calamansi (or lemons) and meat seasoning.
- Boil the ox tongue with the marinade adding tanglad and water enough to cover the meat. Cook in 1-2 hours until the meat is little tender.
- Rinse tongue in running water, clean and peel the rough skin. Store inside the refrigerator for 1-2 hours, this will make the tongue firmer and easy to slice.
- Slice thinly in serving sizes.
- Sauté the chopped onions and minced garlic.
- Put-in the Ox Tongue and cook for a few minutes
- Add the tomato puree, diced tomatoes, beef cube, sugar and water then simmer for an hour.
- In a separate pan, heat the cooking oil and fry the potatoes. Set aside
- On the same pan were the potatoes were fried, remove excess oil and sauté the mushroom.
- Add some oyster sauce then set aside
- Once the Ox tongue is tender, add salt, pepper, sliced red bell peppers and green olives.
- Simmer for 5-10 minutes.
- If the tongue is still not tender, transfer all to a slow cooker and cook for another 30 minutes to an hour on high heat.
- Serve hot with rice.
Nutrition
You can add some other vegetables in this dish such as Pechay or Baguio Pechay to downplay the fat coming from the entire mixture and also to provide an added layer of taste contrast and nutrition.
Also read: Soup Number 5 (Lanciao), the Notorious Filipino Bull balls soup
Check out our new cookbook
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Joost Nusselder, the founder of Bite My Bun is a content marketer, dad and loves trying out new food with Japanese food at the heart of his passion, and together with his team he's been creating in-depth blog articles since 2016 to help loyal readers with recipes and cooking tips.