BS: Tripe - The foodstuff

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Feb 21 - 04:13 PM

I think it may count as cojones, rather than simple bollocks, Steve... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 08:49 PM

Are you talking bollocks here, Jack?

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 07:51 PM

The idea of roasting testicles until they pop sounds a bit scary. In the abbatoir one of the tools I had was a long iron hook with a pointed tip - this was mainly used for fishing out sets of intestines that had missed their intended tray on the conveyor and rolled underneath among the machinery. Testicles occasionally fell off too. It took a hard whack with the hook to burst their tough membrane, but when you did the tissue inside burped out like an enormous zit popping. You wouldn't want to be nearby if the burst was under steam pressure. Having to go through life explaining how you lost your eye to a flying dollop of scalding testicle might be embarrassing.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 06:45 PM

Wasn't it pathetic when some over sensitive marketing dickhead
insisted they must change the long established name of "Brains Faggots"...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Raggytash
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 04:27 PM

Many years ago, when we were skint, I used to go to Oldham market and buy a beast heart and roast it for Sunday lunch .........one cos it was the only beef I could afford and two because it was bloody good!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jos
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 02:27 PM

I like heart - usually lamb's heart these days, but my m0ther used to get an ox heart and fill it with stuffing (parsley, thyme, breadcrumbs ...). It would be carved like a joint.
I used to get ox liver but I never see it these days, so I usually have lamb's liver, not keen on pig's liver though.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Raedwulf
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 01:58 PM

Who would ever accuse you of being rational, Steve? :p Sorry, but we seem to be falling over each other here... you slightly before me. ;-)

In the broad sense, I love tripe. In the specific sense, I've never had it. A friend, whose judgement I respect, said much the same about tripe and snails - "They taste of what you cook them with". Since garlic seems to be the standard flavouring for snails, I don't suppose I ever will! Tripe? Maybe.

In the broader sense, tripe is... the organs, I suppose. Not even the lesser cuts of meat. Rump is still muscle; oxtail, scrag end of neck, ditto... As with many a child, I didn't like liver much ("More bacon, Mum!"). Childrens' palettes are more inclined to sweet flavours than bitter ones (oddly, I've always like sprouts); as an adult, I DO like liver. I love kidneys. There's probably no way you could cook kidneys* that I wouldn't enjoy. Heart I've never had (as far as I know). It's not that they're not freely available, I've just never felt like indulging in the long slow cooking time. Mum used to make a wonderful sweetbread stew. Never had brains or eyeballs (I imagine they're much like snails & tripe). What else counts as tripe? I love black pudding; I will always try whatever local variant of BP there is; and haggis (lungs+) ditto.

But I've never tried tripe. Southerner. I suppose that's it... ;-)

*Except, obviously, with garlic!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Feb 21 - 08:12 AM

Funny what we will or won't eat, innit? I love kidneys, which exist mainly to make piss. I'll eat a nice rump steak, cut from a cows arse. I'll even eat its tail, which spent all its life spattered in dried shit and swishing away bluebottles. I love pig's cheek done in a carbonara, though it spent its life crunching up roots dug up from among its own turds. I'll eat its skin (scratchings, crackling), even though that skin spent its life rolling around in swine ordure and may be presented to me with nipple and anus included. I'll drink milk (and eat the cream and cheese made therefrom) gleaned from a rather dirty set of tits situated pretty close to and not exactly uninfluenced by the cow's bummel...

I'll eat prawns yet heave at the very thought of eating those fat white wriggly grubs you see people scoffing on the telly. But how different are they really? I'll instantly turn up my nose at the suggestion that I could have brains or testicles for tea. Yet those bits are kept wrapped up, protected and clean, for the whole of the beast's life... Rational, moi?

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Feb 21 - 09:20 PM

There are more than one commemmorative cookouts for rocky mountain oysters. And let us not forget the
testicle festival

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Feb 21 - 08:54 PM

Calf fries and lamb fries are big with some folks out here in The Far West. You take the animal and hogtie it, brand it, vaccinate it, ear tag it, and cut away those parts that make it male. Those are then roasted in the branding fire "until they pop." Supposed to be good eatin'. Not exactly my idea of a good meal, but some folks like 'em.

Yes, sheep are branded as well as cattle. Exactly how I don't know, as the fleece would result in a "hair brand."

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Jan 21 - 07:21 PM

That reminds me of the suspected horse's willy that was served up at Mrs Miggin's pie shop in Blackadder...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Jan 21 - 07:10 PM

I've tried tripe but just can't stomach it.

Now, in my youth all the taverns had pickled pigs' tails in a big jar on the bar. Looked like a jar of preserved pink snakes. I didn't have any of those either.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 31 Jan 21 - 03:52 AM

I used to have to visit a Polish ship first thing in the mornings to check the crew lists, and when I finished, I was always given a dish of tripe cooked in milk. It would have been rude to refuse, but all these years later, I wonder if it was a ghastly practical joke.........

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: JennieG
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 10:10 PM

Way back when I was young (and slender.....sigh) oysters were served at a friend's wedding dinner. Having never eaten them before I thought "what the heck" and did so. They went down all right, but sadly came back up again a few hours later with much discomfort.

Forward twenty years or so and I tried oysters again, with the same result.

Since then, oysters and I leave each other alone.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 02:05 PM

I've now remembered eating squid in Italian Restaurants in my youth,
when I was striving to be upwardly socially mobile
with that middle class girlfriend...

I don't recall if squid had any flavour...???

Thank the foodie gods I eventually settled down with my mrs,
a down to earth sausage, pies, mash, chips, and gravy loving girl
from the South Wales valleys...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Thompson
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 01:54 PM

Oh, God, yes, fresh (and identifiable by breed) oysters with a slice of lemon and a flinty Chablis, Charmian; and in Ireland some fresh-made brown soda bread and cool salty butter. Traditionally they're eaten with Guinness on the side, but I prefer the Chablis.
I tasted a very nice oyster dish in le Dôme restaurant in Paris, cooked in a kind of creamy cheesy sauce. I'd been too chicken to order oysters myself, even though they assured me they were a French breed, not the Pacific invaders, but a fellow-diner gave me one to taste; boy, was I sorry I hadn't ordered them!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 01:51 PM

Man in a cafe "What's today's special?"

"Ox tongue" replies the waiter.

"Yeuk! I'm not having something that's been in a cows mouth. Bring me a couple of boiled eggs"

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 06:26 PM

Tongue? You can't lick it.

Eggs? You can't beat 'em.

Swordfish? I had it in Amalfi and wasn't keen. I bought some here and cooked it - same thing. I like all fish in general (we had red gurnard for tea last Saturday - glorious!), but swordfish I found to be a bit too rich and salty. Can't like everything!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jos
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 05:12 PM

We often had tongue when I was growing up. It was delicate and delicious.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 03:26 PM

I won't touch mussels or oysters on looks alone but before swordfish became nearly extinct and -fried in a red hot iron pan- it tasted like beef to me, same with blue fin tuna. My parents grew up in the Depression and they called me little Lord Fauntelroy when I turned my nose up at Tongue and Lima Beans.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 11:42 AM

When I was a kid in the 1960s, convenience food for quick sandwiches consisted frequently
of cheap tinned pilchards in tomato sauce, & sardines.
Jars of salmon, crab, shrimp, and other processed fishy flavour pastes..

Meals of Kippers, and smoked haddock..

Sunday teatime treats of tinned salmon mashed with onion and vinegar sandwiches.
Seaside holiday snacks of jars of cockles..

I ate all that because it's what busy working class mum had meagre time and money to provide..

In my pretentious teens I could tolerate mussels in garlic sauce
whilst trying to keep up with a middle class girlfriend..

Sword fish steaks in Corfu confounded me, because they looked like yummy pork chops
but tasted so fishy, they made me gag...


Since then I've not enjoyed any seafoods except good traditional bland cod n chips,
and tuna heavily flavoured with garlic, chilli.
or any other savoury flavours that stop it tasting like fish...

I'll continue to take a pass on Sushi...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Charmion
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 11:05 AM

Dave the Gnome, I think the first oyster-cracker might have been some guy who had the opportunity to observe a sea otter at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUY0s-Y5lkE

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Charmion
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 07:58 AM

The eating of oysters is one of those “two kinds of people” things. I was introduced to them at the age of eight, and have always considered them a great treat, especially when served with a lemon wedge and a flinty-dry wine such as Chablis.

I think what makes a person like oysters is an olfactory system that responds well to bitter and acid flavours, so the mineral character of the taste and smell stands out.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jos
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 01:41 PM

You can improve the texture of oysters by cooking them.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 01:32 PM

I do quite like oysters but they always pose the question as to who decided to take a rock out of the sea, split it open and suck the snot from it :-D

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 12:27 PM

I just coughed up and spat down the bog
something that reminded me of my only ever encounter with oysters...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Thompson
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 11:39 AM

Or rather not where they're from, but what breed they are.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Thompson
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 11:38 AM

Yes… I just avoid oysters unless I know very specifically where they're from.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Jan 21 - 09:11 AM

If anyone is sensitive to north atlantic shrimp with itching and so forth, try South Atlantic Shrimp. I found it is allergy free.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Charmion
Date: 27 Jan 21 - 08:45 AM

Thompson, you evidently have a species-specific food sensitivity or allergy. Not nice, but at least you know what questions to ask when you see oysters on the menu. In Canada, by regulation, oysters and mussels must be identified at point of sale (including restaurants) by source location and species; I hope it's the same in Europe.

Asian techniques for cooking tripe take much of the curse off the stuff, probably because cultures that eat large quantities of processed bean products such as tofu are good at redeeming tasteless ingredients of questionable texture. Alas, no quantity of ginger and scallions is enough to get me past that slippery rubberyness.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Thompson
Date: 27 Jan 21 - 04:54 AM

Tripe tastes (if that's the right word) like a bath sponge in white sauce to me. Can't face it.
I'll yum down native oysters from Ireland (Ostrea edulis) or France (and I'm sure Whitstable if I were in Kent), but the Pacific oysters (Magallana gigas) that are now farmed all over the place go down fine but come up, along with the raging headache and writhing belly of food poisoning, six hours later. My sister's the same.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: robomatic
Date: 26 Jan 21 - 10:06 PM

Donuel: Utterly fascinating. The tripe that you usually write becomes almost poetic and maybe even informative - when you actually talk about tripe!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Jan 21 - 10:39 AM

Turkish workers traditionally start the day with soup. There are only three kinds, nationwide: lentil, trotter and tripe. The tripe seems to me to be intestines. I figured the idea is, if you can face that you can take anything the day might throw at you.

The other Turkish intestine specialty is to wind them round a stick, grill them like a kebab and slice bits off to eat in a roll (I think of these as bowelburgers). This is okay with enough flaked chili sprinkled over it.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Charmion
Date: 26 Jan 21 - 08:59 AM

Yes, keb, it does. Tripe is the primary constituent of menudo. Without tripe, it's not menudo but something else.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Jan 21 - 11:34 AM

Menudo? Does that have anything to do with tripe?

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 23 Jan 21 - 12:15 PM

”Bloody hell, is that the campsite in Glen Nevis, with the car park just up from the youth hostel,”

The very same. Fortunately, I’ve only experienced it in extended dry periods (several times) including one week when we experienced the hottest day of the year - the very day we ‘did’ The Ben, and which resulted in the then young and sprightly Mrs Backwoodsperson succumbing to sun/heat-stroke and having to go to Hospital in Fort William to be checked out.

My only negative experience there was the midges, although we kept them pretty well under control with liberal applications of Avon ‘Skin-So-Soft’.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Jan 21 - 12:01 PM

Do not eat tripe from the colon!

Tripe is the stomach lining of farm animals, which is served as food. Most tripe is from cattle and sheep. It is the fastest growing/healing tissue apart from the gums or cornea.

Tripe is sold "dressed", where the stomachs are cleaned and the fat trimmed off. It is then boiled and bleached, giving it the white color more commonly associated with the offal as seen on market stalls and in butchers shops.


Tripe in an Italian market


Cows have four stomachs but tripe is generally made only from the first three chambers. The rumen ("blanket") tripe comes from the first stomach, the reticulum ("honeycomb") tripe from the second and the omasum ("book, bible or leaf") tripe from the third.

The word "tripe" comes from an 14th Century French term for guts and entrails. It has been used as a term of abuse for anything worthless since the 16th century.

The Taming Of The Shrew is the only Shakespeare play that specifically mentions eating tripe.
Katherine. Oh, lovely. Can I have some?
Grumio I fear it is too choleric a meat. How say you to a fat tripe finely broiled?

In Henry IV Part 2, Doll Tearsheet calls First Beadle a "tripe-visag'd rascal".

In his diary for October 24, 1662, Samuel Pepys reports eating, "a most excellent dish of tripes of my own directing, covered with mustard." In tribute to this, the Tripe Marketing Board, has declared October 24th to be World Tripe Day.


Soto babat, an Indonesian spicy tripe soup. Gunawan Kartapranata


Pepy's diary entry for April 9, 1664 reports him eating tripe for dinner but later, "I found myself sick in my stomach and vomited, which I do not use to do."

George Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937 after being given an advance by publisher Victor Gollancz to look at the lives of industrial workers in the north of England. During his time researching the book, Orwell had unbelievably squalid digs over a tripe shop in Wigan.

Dressed tripe was a popular, nutritious and cheap meat for the British working classes from Victorian times until the 1950s. The increased affluence of postwar Britain reduced the appeal of this once staple dish, where it is now mainly regarded as pet food.

Tripe remains a popular dish in many parts of continental Europe such as France where it is sold in most supermarkets as tripes à la mode de Caen.

Tripe is a popular street food in parts of China.


Chinese tripe dish. Pixabay


Tripe is a nutritious dish at just about 96 calories per 4 oz portion, and low in total fat. It is an excellent source of zinc and vitamin B-12.

Nelson Mandela's favorite dish was tripe. It was included on the menu for his 94th birthday.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Jan 21 - 10:49 AM

I bake sweet potato until it is caramelized and oozing into the baking sheet, and I try to get the very large ones. Then I can slice off an inch-thick round and heat it in the microwave to go with meals. It grows here very well so some years I end up with many pounds of them (I grow the "Beauregard" variety) to eat and give away.

A North American delicacy that I also get in the garden is corn smut (called "huitlacoche" in Mexico). It's a fungal growth on the maize that goes to waste in my yard but I have many Mexican neighbors and I should advertise when I have it so it gets used. And another yard foodstuff, for years I had a large prickly pear in the yard that people would sometimes ask if they could have a few pads. I eat nopalito cut up and stir fried (I buy it cut up at a local Hispanic grocery store). I was never sure how to handle the ones that grew in my yard.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Jan 21 - 09:59 AM

I am prepared to eat sweet potato now and then

Do not eat it raw. I am speaking from experience.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Charmion
Date: 23 Jan 21 - 09:17 AM

I have never hiked Ben Nevis, but, as a graduate of the Canadian Forces Recruit School, I second Jos’s point.

There was a time in the deep, dark, past when I actively disliked peanut butter. To my youthful palate, its texture was repellent and its flavour too intense in exactly the wrong way. But then I joined up and found myself doing basic training in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, in the dead of winter.

Located on the eastern shore of the Bay of Fundy, Cornwallis is scoured by a cold, wet, prevailing northwesterly wind that occasionally gives way to ferocious nor’-easters just for variety. I’m told it’s delightful in summer.

The low point of the three-month course was the ninth week, which was spent running around a training area covered with jeezly huge fir trees, juniper scrub, and — of course — snow. We were taken there by truck, but returned to camp on foot and at speed, by way of a brushy ridge known to us as Heartbreak Hill. The distance was about ten miles, and we did it in fighting order: ill-fitting winter combat clothing, steel helmet and rifle. The pace was forced march, and we trotted in the camp gate just in time to miss lunch.

In a huge gesture of compassion, the kitchen staff actually let us into the mess hall to partake of the broken meats. By the time I reached the serving hatch, there was nothing left but cold boiled eggs, oranges, crackers and peanut butter.

Thus I learned that peanut butter is actually a food of the gods. Under the right wrong circumstances.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jos
Date: 23 Jan 21 - 05:28 AM

Sorry, I didn't notice the initial joke, even with the original title.

PS Everything tastes wonderful when you've just done the Ben.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Jan 21 - 02:54 AM

Who changed the thread title and buggered up the opening joke? :-(

There really is no need to explain everything you know. I've noticed an annoying trait from West of the pond. You tell a joke and then insist you have to put an explanation after the punchline. I know you have 70+ million idiots there but, honestly, most people understand humour! In the same way, there was absolutely no need to change the thread title. People will either read it or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 06:36 PM

Bloody hell, is that the campsite in Glen Nevis, with the car park just up from the youth hostel, where my dad's Vauxhall Viva got stuck in thick mud in 1974, when I managed to push him out only to get plastered in thick shit head to foot thrown up by his spinning rear wheels? That campsite? Ah, those weren't the days! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: robomatic
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 06:33 PM

I once audited an entry psych class taught by the legendary Philip Zimbardo (Stanford Prison Experiment). He did a lecture recounting experiments he had done where he was trying to tell if he could get more survival class participants to, a) try and, b) say they liked insects as a survival food. At the end of the lecture he offered anyone who wanted canned crickets from Japan. I scored one and took it back to the dorm and tried to see if I could get anyone but myself to try them. I had to make my roommate promise to try them if I would try the one thing I would never touch. So we did that. He ate a cricket (I had already tried them, it was my can after all). And I ate some avocado. He never ate another cricket and I have long welcomed what I describe as lebrechaun flesh.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 06:24 PM

I have it Viet Nam style.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 06:13 PM

With you on McSween’s haggis. Mind you, the best haggis I’ve ever had was with chips, from the takeaway van at the Glen Nevis campsite when we’d just done The Ben.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 05:23 PM

I love haggis. It has to be McSweens, however.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: G-Force
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 05:10 PM

Oh, and it's haggis season again. That sorts out the good guys from the wimps.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: G-Force
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 05:09 PM

Snails? Do them in herby garlic butter and they're to die for. What's the problem?

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 04:45 PM

I could go mostly veggie and eat as much tofu as I could shovel in my mouth,
providing I was wealthy enough to employ my own specialist in house chefs..

As it was, when I was an impoverished student flirting with vegetarianism [ok.. and vegetarian girls..]
nothing I could do with tofu redeemed it's texture and flavour
in any appealing way...