Anyone have menudo recipes?

[chilerelleno]

The smell from beef tripe that I have encountered is more of an animal tissue type smell rather then some completely nasty smell. Think of it as the same category of smell as if you walk into a true butcher shop/processing place. It's not the same exact smell but again it is that KIND of smell of raw or animal parts.

Buy the pre-processed honeycomb stuff and you should get around the smell issue quite easily :)

Pretty much sums it up.
If you ever slaughtered an animal it's the smell of innards, offal, organs or whatever ya call them.
I call many of them delicious!

The stomach is the easiest of the digestive tract to deal with.
I don't even try to handle the intestines themselves, not a big fan of them

 

[banderson7474]

I made the pazole instead and I'm happy with the taste but I don't like the texture of the hominy. I also didn't garnish it with the cabbage or cilantro. I probably should have but I just never ate cabbage in a soup like that raw.

Overall, I don't know if I will try to make it again but the wife and I love our chicken tortilla soup recipe and I think I'm going to use the method of boiling the peppers and making the paste with garlic, onions and spices and then blending them and strain it into the broth.

Side note - I need to learn how to strain it better b/c I made a huge mess in the kitchen haha

 

[bregent]

I made the pazole instead and I'm happy with the taste but I don't like the texture of the hominy.

Was the hominy canned?
I find the texture of canned hominy too be a bit too soft. Not bad, but I prefer to nixtamalize it myself, or make it from dry hominy - it ends up being chewier. You might like it better - or not.

 

[tallbm]

I made the pazole instead and I'm happy with the taste but I don't like the texture of the hominy. I also didn't garnish it with the cabbage or cilantro. I probably should have but I just never ate cabbage in a soup like that raw.

Overall, I don't know if I will try to make it again but the wife and I love our chicken tortilla soup recipe and I think I'm going to use the method of boiling the peppers and making the paste with garlic, onions and spices and then blending them and strain it into the broth.

Side note - I need to learn how to strain it better b/c I made a huge mess in the kitchen haha

Well good to hear you got your part right. I buy and use both gold and white hominy and find the gold to be more flavorful but with a corn tortilla flavor. I like the mix of both.

As for straining use a wire colander/strainer over a bowl and just mash the paste with a spoon to get all the liquid out and then pour the liquid into your broth. That should work :)

 

[banderson7474]

Yea using the bowl method is a lot smarter. I was straining it over the pot on the stove and ended getting it all over the pot, on the floor, trash can, stopped up the sink and even got it all over the paper towels when I went to grab that.

I'm going to get all the garnishes this week and reheat it up and give it another go.

 

[banderson7474]

Chile or anyone, the recipe I used called for 3 types of peppers. I found 2 of them at the local Mexican store but the third one was Japanese peppers. Are you familiar with them? I ended up just using more of the first 2 peppers.

 

[chilerelleno]

Jalepenos? Familiar? Intimately so.
Same with most common dried Chile's sold for Mexican cooking.
What ya want to know?

Omitting one chile isn't a deal breaker.

 

[banderson7474]

unless I misread it, it was Japanese peppers.

 

[chilerelleno]

Oh... I thought maybe your auto correct screwed with that.
Japanese aka Shishito, good luck finding those. Maybe get in some West coast or Hawaiian store, online or something.

Again, not a deal breaker.
They don't belong in a traditional menudo recipe.

 

[banderson7474]

okay gotcha, it only counted for 2 of them so I don't know how much flavor it would add. Think I will just stick with the 2. Do you know what flavor profile they give by chance? heat or sweet maybe

 

[chilerelleno]

Sweet

My experience is limited to a few Japanese steak/sushi houses back in SoCal.

 

[tallbm]

Yea using the bowl method is a lot smarter. I was straining it over the pot on the stove and ended getting it all over the pot, on the floor, trash can, stopped up the sink and even got it all over the paper towels when I went to grab that.

I'm going to get all the garnishes this week and reheat it up and give it another go.

Yeah a bowl, the colander, and a spoon will definitely clean things up for you lol. Also know that in my/our recipe we just go with chile powder, no need to do all the paste and straining and such. It seems to do just fine so you can give that a shot if you like, or heck you can even take those same peppers and turn them into a powder if you like. They may need to be split, de-seeded, and dehydrated more but totally possible. You have quite a few options on approaches to take so feel free to experiment :)

For garnishes I like Cliantro, diced onion, diced jalapeno, and that's about it for me. Many people also use lime (or even lemon) but in this particular dish I opt out on the citrus.

Finally, I ate a Vietnamese soup that was kind of similar to menudo and the only starch they had in it was some big carrot chunks. It made me think that if you wanted to omit the hominy you could or you could just sparingly use it and in this case I would say use a small can of the golden hominy to impart some of the starchy corn tortilla flavor. Heck you can add potato to it or do whatever your heart desires, it is after all your personal concoction :)

 

[chilerelleno]

Once you change the key traditional ingredients it becomes just another sopa.