Folks, I fail. I've had serious technical difficulties with my stupid camera card and I really, really didn't want to post without my lovely Menudo pictures. I've managed to retrieve most of my pictures, and got a new camera card - so, its posting time! Hopefully I won't be so lame in the future.
So. Menudo.
If you already know what Menudo is: please don't run from my blog screaming!
And, as a disclaimer: No, veggies, I did not forget you and I'm not going back on my promise to try to veg*nize my soups..but for this recipe, I'm just not bothering. It would not be a simple substitution or procedure to make this recipe meat-free. I did find a few interesting articles and recipes for veg*n "Menudo" (i have a problem using traditional, ethnic names for foods that so very greatly change the traditional recipe..) and will very likely make my own veg*n menudo sometime in the next few weeks!
About MenudoIn pre-revolutionary Mexico, poverty was widespread and meat was prized. Nothing ever went to waste. Menudo was born from this humble hunger. Where higher-class citizens would take the choice meats, peasants were often left with offal and the undesireable bits - organs, feet, tails, neck pieces, heads (yum, barbacoa!!).
Let's face it. Offal is kind of gross. It can be stinky, fatty, tough, and ugly. Organs are hard to clean and tend to have unfamiliar textures. Feet, tails, and heads sport little meat in favor of cartilidge, connective tissue, and bone. If this weren't a soup blog, I'd brag of my (mis)adventures making homemade steak-and-kidney pie, chicken livers, tripas and tongue (yes, tongue) - but I'm trying hard to stay on topic ;)
How on earth can anyone make these foods palatable? Well - the peasants of early Mexico fought the ick factor attached to white, tough cow stomach lining by simmering the chewy innards over a low fire for hours. Chopped onions, added in the beginning of the simmering process, helped to soften the meat. Fresh and dried chiles were added to the soup for flavor, along with spices such as oregano, epazote, and cilantro. In Menudo rojo (red), commonly made in Chihuahua, Mexico and its border state, Texas - tomatoes or tomato paste was sometimes added with the chiles, which imparted the red look. Menudo blanco (white or clear) , common in the north west of Mexico, had no chiles added, or only had tiny, unripe green chile pequins. Menudo verde (green) was made by adding pureed green chiles that had been roasted and peeled. Menudo rojo is the most common version in the U.S., and is the variety I made this past New Year's eve.
I started with:
5 pounds honeycomb tripe
3 pounds beef knuckle, 50% bone/50% meat
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
3 dried ancho chiles
1 fresh ancho chile
2-3 chipotles
1 large fresh chile poblano
24oz can golden hominy (about 2 cups)
4oz can tomato paste
1 teaspoon salt
epazote
oregano
majoram
garlic powder
fresh cilantro or parsley
fresh lemons and/or limes
About the ingredients:The tripe you buy must be labeled "Honeycomb tripe". The offal used in menudo is not really tripe, or small intestines - it is stomach lining. It is a pale, creamy white and looks fatty, but feels firm to the touch when raw. One side of the honeycomb tripe will have the characteristic honeycomb pattern. I wouldn't try to make this with regular tripe. When buying your tripe, try to avoid the frozen blocks of the stuff (likely unavoidable up north or in non-Hispanic areas, but try your best!). Honeycomb tripe is often sold fresh in vaccum packs. Try to find a pack that feels firm and looks like it contains large pieces.
Traditionally, pig's or calf's foot is used, but I do not eat pig and calf foot was not available at my market (and if its available at your's and you're not in a heavily Hispanic area, I'll eat my hat!) . Any beef or pork soup bone will do. I chose beef knuckle because it was cheap, meaty, and because the knuckle (aka leg joint) is covered in wonderful cartilidge that imparts gelatin into the broth. Gelatin is what gives meat-based brothy soups that delightfully silky, almost thick mouth feel. The true test to good soup is the Refrigerator Test. If it goes into the fridge liquid and comes out a gelatinous solid - its really, really good!! When selecting your soup bone, select one that has plenty of bone and plenty of meat attached. The meat can be added to the soup and goes well with the tripe. Use a fresh, raw soup bone - don't use a leftover baked ham or rib bone for this project.
I suggest using a plain yellow onion, but a white onion will do. Avoid purple or very sweet onions. The fresh garlic can be substituted with the minced jar variety - use about two tablespoons.
The chiles are the important part, and is the part that I believe you should not skimp on. Dried chiles run a scary price per pound - upwards of $8/lb! - but relax. You only need a few, they're light, and they last for ages. I spent a grand total of $4 on chiles - and most of my expense was sacrificed on the wonderful, fragrant chipotles. I admit it - I was intimidated by the huge mound of black gold in the produce section, nestled between the corn husks and bags of masa corn meal. So, I asked a nice old lady what to do.
(Just a note - I live in south Texas! Making menudo for the new year is a HUGE tradition here, so there were throngs of Hispanic housewives and grandmothers picking up menudo fixings. I promise I don't randomly ask strangers for cooking advice!!) She gave me suggestions on how many to buy, which chiles were best to pick, and told me her secret ingredient was dried, smoked chipotles.
Skip on canned chiles if at all possible. When picking fresh chiles, pick chiles that are plump and shiny, firm and cool to the touch, and that feel light for their size. When picking dried chiles, look for glossy, crinkled chiles that do NOT crumble if you pinch them. You should be able to hear seeds rattle inside.
The How-To
Unravel the tripe! Its big! Its white! Its hard! It smells weird!
Yes, its hard to believe that this huge lump of..stuff..will soon be delicious soup. Prepare a cutting board, ladies and gents - and make sure its the biggest board you own. Sharpen your chef's knife, too - honeycomb tripe is gummy and tough when raw.
Put the tripe into a large colander and rinse the entire thing in the sink. Its going to be huge, if you picked a good batch. I used kitchen shears to slice it in half for managability.
When its well rinsed, plop it onto your cutting board. Try to make the section you're working on as flat as possible. Remember - you're working with a piece of stomach, here. Weird grooves and dips and turns are to be expected.
Cut away the flattest parts and set them aside. I dislike cooking with the folds and grooves - my picture was eaten by my camer
a card, but you'll know them when you see them. In an expanse of flat, half-inch-thick tripe you'll notice the characteristic bends and folds and fusions where the tripe is thick, muscley, and doubled over. These parts usually end up tough, so I left them out.
Once you have the flat parts ready, slice them into pieces no larger than 1inch by 1inch. Nobody likes slurping up a giant piece of tripe out of their soup, and guests may be embarrassed to ask you for a fork to eat their soup with if the pieces are not manageable by spoon.
You're probably going to be left with some large chunks of flat , very hard meat. At least 1/4 of my package of tripe was not usable (to my standards).
I used a big, nice cast iron stock pot. When choosing a pot, choose your biggest and best. Before putting the tripe into my pot, I threw in a dash of olive oil, my garlic and onions, and let them caramelize just a bit over medium-low heat. While the tripe was still on the cutting board, I gave the tripe a light layer of salt. Add the tripe, soup bones, more salt, spices (about 2 teaspoons of each), cover with water, and let it simmer over medium heat with a cover for two hours. Be sure to check it several times, especially in the beginning. You'll notice a lot of creamy, brownish skum form on top - skim it regularly, or your stock will end up cloudy and off-tasting. After about one hour, taste-test the broth and add more salt if needed. Don't skimp on the salt in the beginning - it will mask and neutralize any of the unpleasant flavors, draw out the pleasant flavors, and just helps all of the spices and such mix.
After the first two hours, remove the soup bones. Set them aside to pick the meat from. If the meat slides right off and back into the broth - don't worry. Just break it up in the pot. Slice your fresh chiles and add them. For the dried chiles, pop off the stem and remove the seeds and bitter white strings. I put them in broken in half; if you like having small bits of chile in your soup, feel free to break them into tiny pieces first. Add the chipotles whole. Add 1 tablespoon of tomato paste. Cover, and allow to simmer for 2 more hours.
The menudo pretty much cooks itself at this point. Check on it every 20-30 minutes to skim any extra scum or fat, and to adjust the spices. I ended up adding a few tomato-chicken boullion cube because I barely had any tomato paste to begin with, and I like very red, tomato-y menudo.
For the last 20 minutes of simmering, add your can of drained hominy. It does not need to cook for long at all - good Menudo does not have mushy hominy in it.
Serve with fresh cilantro (traditional) or parsley (whoops, I bought the wrong batch of herbs, but it was surprisingly good). A squeeze of lemon and/or lime helps spice up your Menudo. Believe it or not, honeycomb tripe is pretty bland, so it needs plenty of other flavors (like chile, garlic, onion, and citrus) to make it palatable.
After its first trip into the fridge, conduct the Refrigerator test. Your Menudo should be deep red and solid, with a thin layer of orange fat on top.
If your soup is nice and gelatinous, feel free to skim off all of the fat - you don't need it to enhance the taste and mouthfeel. This soup is inherently quite fatty; the stuff on top is really not needed. I removed at least 3/4 of the excess fat. If you can't tell, my Menudo ended up very, very gelantinous. I took the picture too late - my parents had already hit the leftovers, and you can see the giant hole left.
Your Menudo should keep well in the fridge for 3-5 days. Menudo freezes beautifully - place it in a sealed, freezer-friendly container. If you happen to not like your Menudo (it is an aquired, odd taste..), tuck it away for a Menudo-loving friend. Menudo is usually only served in Mexican restaurants on weekends, and it usually flies from pot to bowl to belly by the time lunch rolls around. Any Menudo-deprived person will be grateful for a frozen, homemade serving, though I must admit - I hope that Menudo-deprived person is you! Be adventurous, and enjoy :)
One week later, come new-soup-making time, I was crushed to realize that at least a third of my precious split pea sweet potato soup was still in the fridge. My family is officially sick of soup, and my dear boyfriend C was (un)kind enough to remind me that I was not working very hard at one of my original goals: to make less soup. Less quantity, that is. Its true: I can very easily cook for a dozen or more, but I have troubles when my number of servings dwindle below 5 or 6. This was also a very busy week for me (I work and attend school full time - I'm a few semesters shy of degrees in biochemistry and multidisciplinary sciences. Let's just say that 15 hours of upper division science classes is tough.) So, I decided to see what I had on hand see what small quantity of high-quality soup I could make.
With the bottom of your chef's knife, smash the garlic out of its skin with the heel of your palm (be careful not to cut yourself!). After removing the skin, smash the garlic a little more and chop it so that its not just one large piece of garlic mush.
In a nutshell: dice your onions and slice your mushrooms. I prefer chunky mushroom soup, with plenty of bite-sized mushroom pieces, but feel free to dice the mushrooms or run them through a food processor. If you decide to go with smaller mushroom pieces, reduce the time that you saute them.
..add the mushrooms! I suggested using butter because I personally prefer the way mushrooms taste when they soak in butter while cooking. I cooked my onions in olive oil, then added a pat of butter before adding the mushrooms. Adding olive oil will afford you a little burn-resistance against burning your butter, but still keep an eye on the butter for over-heating and browning.
When the mushrooms are soft, add the chicken stock. I let the small amount of stock and mushrooms simmer for a few minutes, to let the flavors mix. I also added a small amount of salt at this time.
Add the cream! Lower the heat to "low" - the cream can and will burn.
Prepare the corn starch in cold water (the water MUST be cold in order for the corn starch to dissolve; DO NOT try to add corn starch straight to your soup! You WILL end up with lumps of mushy, pasty corn starch in your soup). When mixed, add to the pot.
I served my soup for two (or three) with chicken, cauliflower casserole, and radish greens with mineral water (San Pellegrino? Psh. I can out-burp you with Topo Chico Agua Mineral any day of the week!). It went with the meal deliciously.
It could have gone well on its own, as my father ate it (his serving was that blasted third serving - two cups of soup beyond my goal of mushroom soup for two). Oh well. The more soup, the merrier and at the end of the day, my family was wishing I'd made gallons for everyone to share and enjoy. You can never win >:(
