I could only find one butcher who had a supply of tripe, and that was in the local shopping centre. The tripe was very clean, in comparison to the footage I watched on River Cottage one time. As part of my preparation with all this meat, I have decided not to wear gloves while preparing these meats.....I need to get in touch with the meat, feel it, know it and know that what I am preparing is fresh, good and wholesome....I also need to do this to somewhat remove the mentality of what it actually is....and where it comes from.....
I cut the tripe into bite sized pieces then placed it into the small crockpot, along with a big bunch of herbs from the garden...some roasted garlic from the freezer, some stock from the ox-tail soup...and 1 1/2 cans of tomatoes......got it cooking...after about 2 1/2 hours, I tasted the tripe.....and it was surprisingly rubbery....Yep...Like chewing rubber. If you do plan to prepare your own tripe....don't cut it small like I did, as it will shrink heaps.....there are 4 pieces on the spoon below...so you can imagine the shrinkage. After tea, I tried it again....and decided it was cooked and ready for the rest of the family to taste it as well......
the comments I received were interesting....
* It's a texture thing
* It's different
* It's interesting
* This must be what it is like to eat a cooked jellyfish
* There's just no flavour in it on it's own
* It's ok, but No, I don't want another piece
* I had to spit mine out
* Texturally challenging
* That's the wrong colour, it's supposed to be in milk and onions.....(Mum)
* I'm not tasting it, I don't know where it comes from, I'm not trying that or the tongue....How Grosse. (DS19)
Conclusion: I won't be asking for the tripe, but I am very satisfied with tasting it....Would I try it again? Yes, I would. It certainly didn't taste horrible. It just didn't taste like I had eaten anything. Maybe cooking it another way would add more flavour to it, or make it more palatable, but for now; I can't see the benefits of storing it in the freezer, let alone paying for the tripe to be prepared.
No we won't be asking to keep the tripe. But we can say at least; We have tried it!
Are you a tripe person...do you remember your parents making tripe? Was it like my mum expected, in milk and onions?
If you have a dog the tripe makes a wonderful addition to their diet, full of digestive enzyme activity when fed raw.
ReplyDeleteHi Susan: No it certainly won't be wasted...I have reduced the stock a bit more and am serving it up to my dogs today....but this lot is cooked.
ReplyDeleteMy mother always served tripe in a white sauce with parsley and it was delicious!
ReplyDeleteValerie
I was served tripe when I lived in Chile and it was not the though of eating it that put me off it was the smell of it while it was cooking. Since then I cannot get past that to try it again. The smell is imbeddedin my memory.
ReplyDeleteLike annon said, that's how tripe was served to us as kids, Dad would cook it in milk with onions, then thickened. Looking back to my childhood, I think it was a cruel and unusual punishment. The texture reminds me of the feel of a dish sponge.. and I have also seen the tripe before it was nice looking.. not good juju for this girl.. good you have a go though, you may have liked it, and missed out on something nourishing for your family.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to mention that Mum cut the trip into about 3cm pieces before cooking.
ReplyDeleteValerie
A quick catchup on the tripe...I won't even be ordering it for the dogs, it seems they didn't like it either, sure they dug in at first, but when I took another look at the bowl, they had only eaten the sauce around it...spitting out the tripe....hmmmmm...now that's telling you something..
ReplyDeleteI would be willing now to try the tripe in a parsely and white sauce...but I can't say I could eat a whole dish of it.....
Processed tripe for me: didn't have much of a smell while cooking it, but I can imagine that a fresh tripe cleaned at home (Megga Yuck), could have a strange and offensive odour.
Wendy, your description of a dish sponge is so good....that's the words I have been looking for...lol.
Overall, I am glad we tried it, because there is no way I want that much tripe in a freezer...especially now that I have tried it.
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ReplyDelete