BS: Tripe - The foodstuff

Subject: BS: Tripe
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 07:45 AM

No, not another word for BS - The foodstuff

I just had some for lunch. I do indulge quite often but usually have it cooked with onion in a white sauce or battered and fried in small pieces. This time though I went old school and had it cold with salad. Plenty of malt vinegar and white pepper. Very enjoyable.

I remember first having it at the UCP restaurant on Market Street in Manchester. UCP stood for United Cattle Products if I remember rightly and they had a whole chain of them I believe. I only remember them for serving tripe as I just had it as well as, I think, pies of various sorts but presumably all beef.

Anyone else here either a tripeophile or remember the UCP restaurants?

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Raggytash
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 08:12 AM

My first Saturday job was peeling spuds and making tea in the UCP restaurant in Eccles.

You don't really want to know what we did with the Tripe.

One of the things I remember was being hit in the face with 2lb of wet tripe, it hurt ......... a lot.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 08:14 AM

you got to have guts to eat that.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Mr Red
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 08:18 AM

I have more respect for my gut.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 08:21 AM

There was a UCP tripe shop in Radcliffe. Me granny and grandad in Whitefield loved tripe, along with the cow heels. They also relished sweetbreads, brains and "sheeps' smalls" (clue: only two per sheep and never from ewes). I tried tripe once. It was OK but I wouldn't go out of me way to track it down.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Michael
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 10:03 AM

As a students at Lancashire Farm Institute (Now College of Agriculture) in Preston in the '60s we went to the UCP restaurant every Wednesday afternoon for steak and kidney pie. My granny used to cook tripe and onions slowly in milk for grandad; tried it once; not impressed.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: robomatic
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 10:09 AM

There is a good but very plain Mexican restaurant near where I used to work. I'd get over there with a co-worker when possible. Most of the time I'd order the carne asada, but one time I went with the tripe, partly out of curiosity, partly out of swing mood, and partly to see the effect on my dining partner. Anyhow, it was totally edible, disturbingly pale, and so splashy I had to look for a new shirt before going to any meetings!

Also, there is a legendary episode of This American Life wherein one of the producers hears a story about a visitor going through a pork processing plant sees a box labeled "artificial calamari" and is told that the 'bungholes' of pigs are exported for use as calamari because they are round and when fried who can tell?

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 10:11 AM

That's how I had it too, Michael. ""Not impressed" is about right. Didn't have to go far for a steak and kidney pie: me mum had a chippy in Radcliffe for ten years. I used to get 7/6d a week for bashing the spuds, not bad for six hours' work, three nights a week, in a freezing cold back room...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: G-Force
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 10:54 AM

Our works canteen did 'tripe and onions' occasionally. It was hunks of tripe in a very thick creamy onion sauce, and I thought it was wonderful. But I was in something of a minority (but then I usually am).

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 10:57 AM

That's how I often have it G-Force. The other way, cut into strips, battered and fried, is difficult to tell from some of the pub 'scampi' I have tried!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 11:04 AM

Tripe is the only food I cannot eat under any circumstances whatsoever. Disgusting, vile, vomit-inducing garbage.

Sorry!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 11:10 AM

I'm like that with apple sauce. Vile, slippery, sloppy, sour sludge.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 11:50 AM

The other thing that makes me vomit - literally - is lamb chops. I love them, but every time I eat them I throw up half an hour later. I love them, but they don’t love me. My mum was the same with bananas.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 12:00 PM

I had a bout of gasto-sommutoranother after eating a pork chop with the kidney on. All I could taste when I was throwing up was the kidney so couldn't eat that for years. OK now though. I think the only thing I have had andthought were very unpleasant were pickled pigs trotters and octopus in brine.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 12:15 PM

I eat pickled herring (many people wince at that one) but tripe and head cheese are on my "never want to try it" list. Along with fried insects and peacock eyeballs.

Nope. Won't do it.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe
From: Jos
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 12:17 PM

I once bought a pig's trotter to include with the beans when making cassoulet, but before I added it to the pot I made the mistake of smelling the gap between the 'toes' - and the trotter went into the bin.
I now use a hock (the next bit up from the trotter) when making cassoulet.

The two things I can't eat are avocado - I love it but it makes me ill - and processed peas, because they are vile.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 12:21 PM

Someone please explain the culinary difference between tofu and clay...???

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 12:28 PM

oh.. and..

When I was 20 I had a romantic meal with my girlfriend in a French Restaurant in Normandy.

The only and last time in my life I ever faced up to an expensive dish of congealed Phlegm..

Oysters...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 12:59 PM

There's food that you detest out of bad experience, food that the very thought of revolts you, and food that other people eat that you personally can't see the point of. I'm not going to eat little slivers of raw fish. I'm not eating lamb or duck that looks raw in the middle when you cut into it (though, oddly, I'm fine with rare beef). I don't especially mind most shellfish, cockles, mussels and the like, but I don't go out of my way to try them. I'm sure snails are very tasty, but no thanks. I love a nice rare sirloin steak but I'm not going to eat that line of fat down one side. Sweet potatoes as a side dish are OK but they are not a proper spud. Maybe I shouldn't, but I cut the roe off certain fish (e.g., dabs) and bin it before cooking the fish. I love pork scratchings and even devour what are indisputably nipples in there. I've heard apocryphal tales of pigs' arseholes turning up, but in my extensive scratchings-eating experience I've never encountered one and wouldn't worry if I did. When it comes what meat I prefer, my stock answer is, I'm not fussy - just wipe the cow's arse and pull the horns out.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Charmion
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 01:14 PM

PFR, tofu is nourishing and clay is not. Also, you can actually chew tofu. Try that with clay and your teeth will suffer.

Tofu don't get no respect. The stuff is bung-full of protein but it has no character, good or bad, so the cook is responsible for giving it some. Dependence on processed beans (such as tofu) is the reason behind the amazing flavours Asian cuisines are noted for.

In my youth, I read French cookbooks as if they were novels, and did my best to make everything that fit into my scanty budget. I remember making, eating, and actually enjoying a tripe dish involving lots of onions and, oddly, prunes; it was rich and strange. But then I signed up for a history course (being a student at the time) and soon found myself reading "The Road to Wigan Pier" by George Orwell. It includes an unpleasantly vivid extended discussion of life in a working-class boarding house circa 1935 that put me off my feed for a week, and permanently relieved me of any desire to eat tripe ever again.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jos
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 02:04 PM

I am prepared to eat sweet potato now and then in order not to hurt the feelings of whoever cooked it for me, but I wouldn't choose to put it with my one cooking. I don't like the texture and ... it's too SWEET.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jos
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 02:05 PM

'my one cooking' was meant to be 'my own cooking' (not sure how that happened).

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 02:11 PM

I love sweet potatoes but they’re off the menu for me - too heavy on the blood-glucose front for a diabetic, worse than ordinary potatoes.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 02:13 PM

Steve, you just expanded on my list of unpalatable foods that will never be added to my otherwise relatively robust list of foods I've tried. I like clams, but never was tempted by oysters or snails. There's no accounting for it. Chitlins, pork rinds, or pigs feet, no. Caviar would be wasted on me. That leaves more for people who like it (and leaves more sturgeon in the river). Caviar would seem like eating the fish eggs we bought to bait our hooks as a kid.

I like tofu and I've cooked with various Asian sauces from foods on that list above, but some of these descriptions of tripe dishes confirm that bias is firmly in place.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 02:44 PM

I worked for a while in one of the biggest abattoirs in the world, mainly in the sheep-gutting area. The plant was a maze of conveyors like a model railway layout from hell, and the tripe went along a little line of its own against the wall and through curbing corridors from and to who knows where. They put about 20 cleaned tripes on every hook, and they formed a man-sized pear-shaped blob that wobbled as it trundled along. It was as if we we re butchering triffids.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 04:31 PM

Hope it didn't put you off the tripe, Jack. :-)

Aye, Jos, it's the sweetness of the damn things that puts me off. However, Waitrose do a sweet potato falafel that is a thing of beauty...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Raggytash
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 04:41 PM

I too spent a little time in an abattoir. I think a lot of people would never eat meat again if they were to ever visit one.

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...

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: 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: 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: 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: Donuel
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 06:24 PM

I have it Viet Nam style.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: keberoxu
Date: 25 Jan 21 - 11:34 AM

Menudo? Does that have anything to do with tripe?

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Thompson
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 11:38 AM

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