BS: Tripe - The foodstuff

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Jan 21 - 12:21 PM

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

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: 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: 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
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: 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 - 11:04 AM

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

Sorry!

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

I have more respect for my gut.

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: 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: 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?