Kids these days will never know the glory of the tripe stall

We had a tripe stall on our local market in Lancashire in the 80’s. My grandparents were the war generation and offal was easier to get. It also wasn’t rationed after 1941 and was a valuable source of protein. Grandad loved pigs trotters too and cow heel. He still went rabbiting with his Jack Russell’s in the 70’s.

Oh gads min,I remember my Gran cooking it in milk with onions.
She gave me a taste🤮🤮
And the smell🤮

Aha, that's interesting! Never fancied eating carp. I believe it's very bony and often tastes muddy.

That's very amusing.

It used to be the Oysters were the food for poor people, like yourself, and now the new rich crave them. One wonders why?

Anyway, you may find that tripe follows a similar pattern and it makes a resurgence amongst the 'chavs' and 'ne'er do wells'.
Who knows what will happen in this world today?

My grandad loved it but nanna did not. You can still buy it, they sold it in Morrisons where I used to live, think it was popular with overseas students

I grew up in 70's and 80's and never ate tripe or saw it in Waitrose. It was for poor people!!

I love liver and bacon and make it for myself from time to time.

M&S do liver and bacon ready meals!

River fish have to be kept in clean water for a while to get the mud out of their system I believe.

I had some in the restaurant there about 25 years ago. I was contemplating it and the woman serving asked if I'd like to try a bit. She gave me a whole potato and a bowl full to try for free. It was delicious and I ate it all but was too full up to buy any more. I still feel slightly guilty.

They weren't a thing where I grew up but they were where my grandma lived so everytime we went to visit my dad would always get some (as well as cockles!)

I would never touch it, I might have had a tiny bit once but stuff like that wasn't for me.

I was very much a smoked salmon and prawn child, that's as far as I went with adventurous food.

From the 1970s into the 1990s my Mum used to show labradors and we usually had at least 3 of them. She used to buy whole cow's stomachs from the abbatoir and boil it in this big boiler in the garage. The smell was horrendous and Mum wore a mask, like a gas mask, for the whole process. You could smell it several streets away.
Once it was cooked she would dice it up and freeze it in bags in a big chest freezer.
Apparently it was great for the dogs, and very economical.🤢

Tripe and onions was one of my most favourite meals in the 70’s. Only my Dad and I enjoyed it but poor mum would make it around once a month, it was boiled in milk and yes really stank the house out. I found some a few years ago and offered to cook it for Dad. It tasted awful so unsure if my tastes have changed or what. I can actually eat most things, love all offal and have eaten many animals and parts of. Wouldn’t eat rat though

We used to get liver and onions as a school meal - can you imagine that today. Liver was like the leather sole of your shoe!

No tripe stall in my childhood (thankfully!) but I remember going shopping with my mum in the 1980s and asking her what the packet of ham-looking stuff called ‘tongue’ was.

Tongue, she replied. Actual tongue.

I was horrified!

My kids do eat (and enjoy) a fair bit of niche animal product, as DH has a Caribbean background and oxtail, cow foot and tripe are used in certain dishes.

I don’t eat meat 😉

My Nan was a huge fan of tripe and would eat it straight from the market stall paper, with loads of vinegar. Also Lancashire.

I stayed at a supposed luxury hotel with work, in the Swiss Alps. With hindsight I think the chef might have been having a funny turn because we were served tripe with chickpeas and broccoli for breakfast. I had a life changing hangover and this dish nearly finished me off.

You can buy jars of Polish tripe soup in the international type supermarkets here.

I love heart, trotters, pigs head and liver. I once ate nearly my bodyweight in chicken hearts in a Brazilian all you can eat BBQ place.

My DH is very fond of tripe - he used to get it in Kirkgate market in Bradford when he was a student - he assures me it’s delicious eaten fresh with salt and vinegar! His late DM would always get some for him when we visited. She used to buy it locally, or get it from the market in Macclesfield. These days, he only has it when we go to France, where it features on many a menu - tripes à la mode de Caen, tripes à l’ancienne or tripes à la Lyonnaise, for example. You can buy it tinned in the supermarkets - he usually brings some home with us! I do not care for it.

I'm in Canada and they always have fresh tripe for sale in the meat section of the supermarket. No idea who buys it?

DH loves a bit of offal (stuffed heart, anyone)? But he draws the line at tripe.

@Nofeckingway it still is sold for consumption! Yes, offal is cheap - because there is less demand - because a great deal of it is rank (I can say this with some authority, as my mother had a huge fondness for cheap meat!).

October 24th is National Tripe day apparently.

The date was chosen because on that date in 1662, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary, that he had dined on "a most excellent dish of tripes" according to google.

Why was it even being sold for human consumption. Was it a cheap source of protein or meat. I never saw or heard of this as did not grow up in UK . Was it only a northern dish although isn't jellied eels an East London thing .

Reminds me that Adrian Mole in a chef period had a TV show and receipe book called Offally Good .

You can still buy fresh tripe on the market here. And pigs heads, trotters, cow's feet, lamb and ox hearts, livers of many origin, gizzards and necks, pigs tails, cow, sheep and pig tongues.
This is South Yorkshire.

Wikipedia quote:

edit
“The udder, or elder in Ireland, Scotland and northern England, of a slaughtered cow was in times past prepared and consumed.[5] In other countries, like Italy, parts of Pakistan, Kenya, and some South American countries, cow udder is still consumed in dishes like the traditional teteun it] and ubres asada.”

Yuck!