Hearts & Tongues

One of the most favorite parts on a caribou, besides the Patiq (bone marrow) that ALL little Eskimo kids fight over is the Heart and Tongue. My favorite, my sisters favorites, and all my childrens favorite! Especially Max. Max goes all crazy for heart and tongue soup. So we always wait until he and his sister get up for vacations to have it.

Know what's better than Heart and Tongue Soup? Heart and Tongue Soup at camp. With hot rolls.

Here's a rudimentary way of making soup at camp...the best way.

Warm up your propane tank and light the pilot lights in your stove. You need to get one of the kids to find a fresh patch of snow with no tracks and fill up your pot. This pot doesn't have enough, but we like to melt a little first, then add more until it's the amount we need. Boil it for about 5 minutes.

In the meantime, you need a pretty good heart and tongue. My husband just went hunting a few weeks ago for some ground meat for us because we ran out (oops). So I had a heart and tongue all frozen and vac sealed in one of the freezers outside. We just let it thaw in the afternoon sun on the counter at camp.



Cut said heart and tongue up into little bite sized pieces. I usually cut mine into smaller sizes so we can have LOTS of meat in each bite. And you have to use an Ulu. You can't use a knife. Knives are for men. Ulus are for women. :) (That's your lesson for the day) And it's even cooler if you use an ulu your dad made out of a stanley hand saw.

Add those bite sized pieces to the pot. Then you add some spices. At camp, we don't have a "spice cupboard." We have salt, onion flakes, garlic powder, and maybe celery salt. I have bay leaves and pepper too I think. That's what I added. Whatever was on hand.

Then you cut up whatever else you want in your soup. We always put in tri-colored spiral noodles, carrots, and potatoes. Lots of other people put in stewed tomatoes (we would have but forgot to get a few cans in town) and rice. (I hate rice, so I never put rice in my soups!) Since noodles, potatoes and carrots take about the same time to cook, we just add them all in at once.

I'd say that this was the perfect time to put those rolls that are rising in the sun in the preheated oven. If you're like me and make rolls every time you make soup. I can't have soup without hot rolls. Hot, homemade, fluffy, yeasty, buttery rolls. Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you how I make them. (without measuring and without a recipe) Today though, put them in the oven when you add your noodles.

Then if you're lucky and the stars are aligned, your rolls will be ready when your noodles are al dente, the potatoes aren't mushy and the carrots still have a little crunch.

After that, because it's really REALLY hard to wait for your soup to cool off, especially after the rolls come out of the oven and smell up your entire cabin of fresh baked goodness. So, just let one of the kids get more snow, add the snow to each of their bowls and let them go to town on the best heart and tongue soup they've ever had. (Until the next pot is made, that is!)

And there you have it. Heart and Tongue Soup, just the way we like it. With hot rolls, made with fresh boiled snow at your camp with no running water or electricity, eaten in the evening sun, on the table you yourself grew up at.

Watching them eat an entire pan of hot rolls before any of them can even cool off is thanks enough for me.

Enjoy.