You saw that I made tamales recently.
Yay! Bucket item checked off the list. Next on the list is menudo.
These are 2 very traditional dishes here in Mexico, and in Mexican households all over the world, eaten at the holiday season, for the most part. In, and of itself, it’s not a difficult dish, but, like the tamales, it’s an a marathon, not a sprint.
I was in the kitchen for hours, and of course, I forgot to take some of the prepping photos. Here’s what I did get, however.
Why do we add a cows foot to the stomach (tripe) you ask? Well, there are a couple of reasons; 1, flavor from the bone and cartilage, and 2, the cartilage imparts gelatin, making the menudo, as a finished dish, quite viscous, with an amazingly rich flavor.
We bought the tripe 2 years ago actually but are just getting around to using it. (Sure opens up a bunch of freezer space I’m here to tell you.) This tripe is called “honeycomb”, and you’ll see why in the next photo. That’s exactly what it looks like. Let me show you.
It’s, as I said, quite a process, and not for the faint of heart.
First you need to cut up the 2 kilos of tripe into 4-5cm pieces, then add them to a tub of water with at least a cup of white vinegar to soak for 30 minutes. It deep cleans the stomach, reducing the incredible smell that comes with offal of any kind. Then, it’s all rinsed off, and put into your cooking vessel, mine, above, is called a cazuela, (caz-WHEY-lah), and I use it frequently. You might use a stock pot instead of the cazuela.
While the beef was cooking, I cleaned, deseeded, deveined , and soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes, 15 guajillo (gwah-HE-yoh) chiles, 2 ancho (AHN-chō) chiles, and 3 pasilla (pah -SEE-yah) chiles, each having a unique flavor, and amount of heat, reserving the water in which they steeped to be used later.
All that done, I had to grind some whole spices in my molcajete, reserving them to be added once the beef started to boil, and the protein scum was removed from the cazuela and discarded.
Ok, stop. Enough play by play.
I’m going to post the recipe at the end of this post, and you can read for yourselves what it all entails. In the meantime, here are a few more photos which happened along the way.
So, how did it turn out?
INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS!
We were tasting it as we went along, for hours, adding more oregano, more salt, more bay leaves, more chile water. In the end, it was the best menudo either of us has ever eaten. Seriously! It was delicious.
I don’t expect we’ll have much quantity left, after a day or so, to freeze any for another day, but I’ll try.
Until next time, be happy. Here’s the recipe.
