Beef Tendon Recipe

"Are you sure you're not feeding me penis?" my friend asked with a frown on his face. "Because this looks just like the penis you made me eat last week."

"First of all," I replied defensively, "I'm offended by the very accusation that I would engage in such subterfuge. Second, I didn't make you eat it; you wanted to try it. And third, this is not a penis. It's tendon."

Friends can be so ungrateful. You feed a guy some pizzle just once, and you can never live it down. EVER.

A week's adventures in pizzle left me with a serious hankering for beef tendon. While beef penis, does, in fact, bear a resemblance to tendon when cooked, tendon has a few distinct advantages. First, tendon only takes four hours of cooking time to soften as opposed to ten. Second, while both parts are essentially types of tissue, the peripheral parts of the tendon carry bits of flesh and fat as well. Third, beef tendon possesses its own unique taste. (The bits of penis, as you'll recall, lacked any real flavor.) Beef tendon, on the other hand, is truly beefy on its own; enhanced with additional seasonings, the tendon has a meaty depth that belies the lack of muscle content.

Beef tendon is commonly served at Cantonese restaurants, where the cut is often stewed alongside daikon. Tendon is also a regular addition to bowls of pho. My favorite tendon dish, however, is a classic Chinese cold appetizer: beef tendon, thinly sliced and dressed in a pungent mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, and chile oil.

The cold salad approach, using soy sauce, vinegar, and chile oil, is a common way to dress various cuts of Chinese-style offal. At mom-and-pop shops, you'll find pigs' ears and pork stomach dressed in this mixture, with liberal amounts of chopped cilantro and finely chopped green onions mixed in before serving. Tendon, however, is my favorite cut to use with the dressing—after a long cooking time, the tissue is particularly adept at absorbing the flavors of the vinegar and soy sauce.

Finally, instead of simmering, the tendon is gently steamed to achieve the right degree of tenderness. You can cut down on the cooking time by half with the use of a pressure cooker, but steaming is just as easily done as long as you monitor the water level in the pot. No Chinese offal meal is complete without this cold dish.