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

Oh dear me. I’ll eat most things but tripe is a no-no & Elder! No way. Puke.

Im finding it hard to think such stuff was being sold back then. Maybe post war 1940’s or early 50’s but the 80’s?
Where was this in the UK?

I remember there was a row of tripe stalls in Leeds market in the 1960s, in my memory the tripe was hung above the stall counters, folded over a bar so that it hung down like a sheet…can I trust this memory??!!

We didn’t eat it, but regularly had liver ( which I hated), kidneys cooked on their own, and I used to go to the local butchers for ‘lights’, which were lungs sold in a great squashy parcel, for our cat.

You can give Callos a miss when you're in Spain then OP, it's a stew with tripe in. DH loves it.

Yes to the pissy phone box, particularly on a hot day!

We used to feed our dogs tripe. Used to make me retch. Foul on a whole other level.

My mother used to cook us liver - not lovely little tender lamb liver or chicken liver, but bloody great slabs of cow liver with all the tubes in it. She'd wallop us if we didn't finish our food, so I devised a cunning method, where I'd put the liver in my mouth, then carefully let it drop into my napkin when she wasn't looking and then drop it under the table for the dog to eat.

Tongue was another delicacy, I used to dread - same manoeuvres required as liver above. Grey gristly meat stews were such a welcome relief compared to liver and tongue.

Of course they can know the glory of tripe- all they have to do is visit Rome, it's the speciality there, and on display in butcher's. It's often on display in halal butcher's in the UK actually, as well.

My Mum mentions this place whenever anyone mentions offal, pining for the beauty of tripe with a fond look in her eyes and yet in my forty-odd years I've never known her to buy and eat tripe so it can't be that bloody great can it 😂

The big indoor food market in Barcelona is a fascinating insight into offal, on case anyone's visiting soon.

My Dad used to like dark tripe, which he brought home from the butchers wrapped in newspaper, and which looked like an unappetising heap of greyish washleather. This was apparently a “treat”, and was liberally doused with salt and vinegar and eaten with every evidence of enjoyment.
I used to look at the oozing pile with absolute horror and revulsion. I enjoyed “normal” offal such as liver and kidneys, but tripe always seemed a step too far.

I raise you: ox tongue, massive thing lying on a slab. Then seeing it put into a press for tongue slices...I realised then that DM had lied to me, she told me that tongue slices were not really tongue to get me to it eat it.

T

Ghastly, veiny things.

The fish stories are reminding me of my French exchange… I said to my host that there were poissons dans la baignoire and she clearly thought my French translation was dodgy as she was complaining to her mum “Horatio says there are fish in the bath”.

There were fish in the bath.

It was definiley a Grandad thing 😂
I can picture my Grandad sat at the kitchen table eating a plate full.

I once saw a tripe stall in Leeds market, the indoor bit. Over 30 years ago.

My mum would never accept that I could smell the bitterness of offal of all types. I refused to eat any of it - liver, tripe, kidneys, tongue, trotters, the lot. She would serve the various offal based meals up quite regularly and I would happily starve rather than sit at the table.

Even as an adult it turns my stomach and I can smell it whether it's raw or cooked. I don't care how fancy a restaurant is, I'm not eating it and nor am I able to cook it up for the dog. She gets dried ears and whatnot but that's my limit.

I was a child of the 80s and the only other food issue I had was fish....

There was one on Rochdale market until they closed the covered one down. They probably still sell it somewhere in Bury market but I haven’t looked too closely.

I can remember that the one in Rochdale was just a refrigerated counter with the tripe piled up on trays - no effort to try and display it better at all. My brother once commented that it looked like someone had just dumped a load of dirty, wet towels on there 😁.
I like liver, kidneys, heart and tongue a lot, but draw the line at tripe.

I could have written the exact same post myself, nanna and I went shopping every Saturday, drink and cake in the market cafe before crossing the road to the food hall and the tripe shop in the corner! Grandad liked the honeycomb tripe, which nanna cooked in milk with onions! The udder had a definite grey tinge to it!

Never eaten tripe in my life!

Tripe is pretty much the only thing I won't eat.

We used to have chitterlings for sale on the market here, intestines.
Where I grew up there was a mushy pea van on the market and I do miss that.

😂

God, I remember my mum poaching it in milk for my dad when I was a child. The stench made me gag - it made mum gag as well and she frequently told my dad the butchers had run out!

I hate the tripe stall 😩

That’s interesting. I always wondered if the tradition came from the fishermen bringing them back in time for the festivities. They are from Sicily so it makes sense that they’d need to keep the fish as cold & fresh as possible. They also prepare saltfish for those festivities - I read somewhere that this was an import from the days the sailors would pass through the from the Caribbean. I also saw it in Norway, once, possibly that was imported via Venice.

I hate these bits of animal being presented but I love the crystallised culture!

Goodness. I've read that in Central Europe where lake-caught carp is traditional at Christmas it was, or maybe still is, the custom to transport live carp in tanks to the cities and towns and sell them (still alive) to be kept swimming, or trying to, in the bathtub until they were to be cooked, when somebody would have to bash the fish on the head before it was cooked. I suppose it was a practical solution to how to get fresh fish in the days before fridges and freezers.

I remember the same, but at primary school, not at home. We weren't allowed to leave the table unless we had finished.
I was sick afterwards. Still can't eat liver.

I've never eaten tripe. My Mum doesn't like offal in any form so I didn't grow up eating it except the kidneys that used to come attached to pork chops, which I loved. I think she did occasionally cook steak and kidney, making sure that my Dad and I got the kidney and she got none. I like liver once in a way, as long as it's not full of tubes and just flash fried. Liver pate is lovely.

My parents are from Italy. They came to this country in the 70s and when I was small they would together with their siblings, buy a whole tripe, clean it, and eat it together. Sort of tripe-eating parties. 🤢🤮 Also Made sausage like this. Big rolls of pig intestines in the fridge, ready for the ground meat to full. Not as gross as the tripe but…

Like some of the posters here, my cousins LOVED it. I couldn’t get over the smell, kind of poo-ey.

When I went back to Italy recently mu aunt was cooking it as a special treat. I had to decline the lunch Invitation. Never knowingly tried it, but apparently the honeycomb shared bits are the best.

Also: they would buy live eels at Christmas time, keep them in a bowl in the bath then kill them & Fry them fresh. It was unnerving going to the loo with those big slippery things gawping... 👀👀