My Dad was a truck driver for Swift & Co in the East St Louis stockyards. Employees could have "trim" for free. Back then, "trim" included tongue, brains, cheeks, liver, heart, and ribs from beef and pigs. I had a lot of brains and eggs as a kid. Liver, too. But the best was beef tongue. Boiled in salt water, skinned, and then thinly sliced. It's the most delicate, fine-grained meat you can imagine. Possibly the best tasting meat on the animal.
Old Black guys all ran little BBQ shacks. Cinder block and window screening with a hand-painted sign out front "Ribs and Snoots." Low and slow over hickory wood coals, those men were magicians with meat. Ribs and head meat.
