Here in the States, they sell beef tongues only the tip of the tongue part, not as in China, they often sell the tongue with it's huge root part. I remember I bought a beef tongue in a local market in China years ago, it was total nearly 3 feet long, 2/3 of it was the root which is ... 'trush meat', could I only buy the tip of it? no way, it was sold as it was.

Before cooking any tongues, we have to do one thing which is critically important: boiling, boil the tongue for 1.5 hours till the white shell on the tongue is able to be pealled off easily.

Then wash the tongue again, you can slice the tongue into thin pieces, then cook them in the way you like.

In this dish, I added 1 cup of soy sauce; 2 cinnamon sticks; 1 table spoon of Chinese Five Spices powder; 1 table spoon of brown sugar; half cup of wine; several spicy hot dried peppers, salt to taste, semmier in low temperature for hours.

Tongue (pig's tongue and beef's tongue are the most common ones to be found in stores) has it's unique texture; I don't know how to describe it to you, you will have to try it out on your own. Alan likes it's texture and taste... of course we know he eats almost everything as we Chinese :-P