In our family, tripe soup is a chapter on which we’re very clear: it’s done once a year (before New Year’s), it’s prepared only by Mrs. Hădean, and I do exactly what I’m told, without contributing to the “creation”. We also chose a special pot, which has nothing special apart from the fact that we don’t use it for anything else but the tripe soup, it is an enameled pot with a capacity of ten liters. This way, it may be possible to pass it down to future generations . Our soup is still on the stove (the images you see are of another tripe soup which I photographed on a different occasion, as I don’t have the time to photograph/edit the soup today) and by the time it’s done I will have time to write this post, as a friendly gesture for all the 800 people who liked the photo I posted on Facebook yesterday and for the nearly 50 people asking for the recipe.
The tripe soup recipe is very simple and each family has its own take on it. Basically, if you know how to prepare it, it will turn out good, if you don’t, it will turn out bad. My lady knows how to prepare it. Here’s how: she sends me to buy the vegetables, the tripe (I use 2 kilograms of pre-boiled tripe, cleaned and frozen; it took a while until I found a good one, but I prefer it to the raw, almost always bad tripe, with which I have to go through that dreadful, smelly process – it’s bad mojo when you live in an apartment building – which I also find useless and irrelevant to the final picture). I buy beef bones with marrow and two (small) pork legs. I also buy carrots, celery, parsley root, parsley leaves, onion and garlic. I return home, I leave the tripe to defrost overnight, I wash and clean the vegetables, I wash the bines, I scorch and I clean the pork legs. I put cold water in the ten-liter pot (it’s a waste of time and resources to start the tripe soup in a pot with a capacity of less than 10 liters) and I introduce the bones and the pork legs, which had been previously scalded for less than 30 minutes (they produce far less scum this way).
The heat has to be very low, the boiling process must have an extractive character, so you can obtain all the taste provided by the bones, pork legs and vegetables. This broth is the most important part of the tripe soup, much more important than the tripe itself. It should boil for three hours and during this time you can add to the pot a bit of salt and, if necessary, you can skim it. If the boiling bones have some meat on them, it’s even better (you can add 2-3 pieces of shoulder, it’s great having some chunks of meat in the soup apart from the tripe). After obtaining the soup from which everything begins, Mrs. Hădean sieves it in a smaller pot (the soup is reduced with almost 4 liters by boiling), she then passes me the big pot so I can wash it and so I can pick the meat from the bones, and then she sieves it again and pours it back into the pot in which it boiled. This time, add the tripe cut into medium size strips, a paste made from 8 garlic cloves (not too large), crushed and blended with a bit of salt and two pretty large carrots, finely grated. I know a lot of people prefer to fry the carrots in oil and add them to the soup at the end, for coloring purposes. I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying that if you grate them finely and you allow them to boil on low heat, along with the tripe, the soup will get extra taste and plenty of color, without being burdened by fat (by the way, after sieving, I degrease the soup, removing all the grease from the surface, which is about half a liter of grease I wouldn’t give anyone to eat).
After the soup boils with the tripe in it for an hour, on low heat (it’s enough for it to obtain the tripe flavor, if you managed to get a quality one – usually, the most expensive is the best), Mrs. Hădean adds to it 100 milliliters of pickle vinegar. It’s flavored and less acidic. She then thickens the soup with a mixture of 5-6 room temperature egg yolks, 300 grams of sour cream and some soup from the pot, the latter being added little by little to bring the dressing to the right temperature to prevent curdling. Once the dressing is added (also called liaison or the Romanian “îngroșală”), turn off the stove and let the soup to cool down. Nobody is going to argue with you should you want to add to you plate some chopped parsley, a tablespoon of sour cream, more vinegar or hot pepper.
This was the last post, the last recipe of 2013. It was the most beautiful, but at the same time the most difficult year of my life so far. I had many great challenges and equally rewarding victories. I learned important things about myself, about people and life. I got an advantage because, despite the hardship, I have a woman by my side who seems to know me inside out for a lifetime. And who makes the best tripe soup, matching my taste. Tonight, after the champagne and the fireworks, I will be able to sleep soundly and with a large smile on my face. Stay healthy. Happy New Year!
P.S. It takes 4 hours to make a good tripe soup, but it doesn’t involve too much effort, you don’t have to supervise it constantly. Final calculations revealed a production cost of 2 lei/serving (by serving we understand the optimum quantity you can eat without being sick, on a single meal, considering the soup the course opening the meal) taking into consideration that we used the most expensive tripe and some bones that had meat on them.
Special thanks to
Oana Bodnariuc, Authorized Translator
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