A traditional Mexican beef tripe soup, known for its rich flavor and as a common remedy for hangovers. This recipe details the process from cleaning the tripe to making the chili sauce and simmering it to perfection.
Rinse off the beef tripe with water, rub it off with lime, and squish the lime juice on it and rub like if you were washing a cloth; add the vinegar and keep rubbing. Then rinse it off with water. Cut the tripe into pieces big enough to fit in a spoon; you need a sharp knife, and be careful. You can also cook it and then cut it when it is softer. Add the tripe in an 8qt pot and cover with water; add the whole head of garlic and the whole onion, but remove a few layers of the peel; before adding it, cut the tip off the garlic head, add the two bay leaves and about 2 tbsp of salt, cover and cook it for an hour and a half on medium heat. Add in a pot the chilies without the seeds and stems, garlic cloves, and half onion with enough water to cover; cook for high for about 15 minutes or until chilies are tender. Then add everything you cooked with the chilies into a blender and blend it well with about 2 cups of the water from the pot, the cumin, and the Mexican oregano. After the tripe has been cooked for 1.5 hrs, remove the onion and head of garlic, and add the sauce from the blender but pass it through a fine strainer to retain the big pieces of skin from the peppers; cover and cook on low for 2 hrs. After it is cooked for 2 hrs, add the hominy but rinse it off before to get rid of all that white water; fill up with hot water until one inch before the top. Season with salt to taste and more oregano. Serve the menudo with diced onion, cilantro, lime, oregano, chopped jalapeño, and corn tortillas on the side.
