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

[Tben]

When I was growing up in the 1980s, I used to go shopping in the town centre with my Gran every Saturday. Amongst our many ports of call, we’d always go to the tripe stall on the fish and meat market to get some tripe for my Grandad.

A whole stall devoted to selling the stomach lining of a cow.

Kids these days will never know of such things. Tripe
is gone, never to come back. I was there, at the end, as it passed into history.

I hated it myself of course - the look, the smell, just… no.

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!

😂

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.

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!

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.

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....

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

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

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.

Ghastly, veiny things.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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!

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.

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 .

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.

@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!).

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.