Beef Tripe Fundamentals
You may like me, be only now discovering beef tripe, and all the benefits it has to offer!
While I personally never grew up eating very many organ meats (liver was really the only thing we had on rare occasions), I like to think that I can still discover new things and try them out! Beef tripe is basically the inside lining of a cow’s stomach. A cow has four stomachs, and each stomach has it’s own lining or pattern. Some of these are higher in quality than others. Perhaps you have heard or seen in your local butcher’s or supermarket, “honeycomb” tripe. Well, “honeycomb tripe” refers to the premium lining of a cow’s stomach, and is the one that most people enjoy eating, and is so named because it has a pattern that resembles a honeycomb.
So, what are the secrets to being able to introduce tripe into your diet, without it being a major upheaval?
Below, I have tried to put together some tips that may help you to overcome your reticence about this amazingly nutrient dense food. My hope is that you will give tripe a try, so that your body can reap all the benefits!
So go ahead, enjoy your tripe 😉
Wishing you all healthy eating, for a happy life!
X Nic
You will want to prepare & cook a reasonable amount of beef tripe as it does shrink during the cooking process. It’s going to yield about 50-60% of what you started out with.
I have found that when pressure cooking beef tripe, the volume of tripe that remains after cooking is a lot less by volume, so make sure you take this into account. By way of a couple of examples:
Pressure Cooker Tripe
1837g of uncooked tripe, weighs 1150g after pressure cooking for 18 minutes.
Only 62.6% remains compared to what you started out with. This corresponds to a (x 0.626)
Pressure Cooker Tripe + Oven Roasted
1100g of uncooked tripe, weighs 365 g after pressure cooking for 18 minutes and then oven roasting at 150c for 1 hr.
Only 33% remains compared to what you started out with. This corresponds to a whopping (x 0.33)
If you cook tripe right it will taste amazing, so consistency is important. If you undercook tripe, it’s too rubbery and you can’t really chew it. If you cook it too long, then it can become a little too soft.
Adding enough salt to the tripe during cooking, can make a big difference at the end.
Discard the cooking juices left behind from cooking tripe, as these will contain a lot of the impurities from the tripe.