Menudo Rojo (Mexican Red-Chile Tripe Soup) Recipe (2024)

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Menudo, a spicy and hearty tripe stew from Mexico, is flavored with an infusion of dried chiles, dried oregano, and cumin.

Chichi Wang

Chichi Wang wrote a variety of columns for Serious Eats including The Butcher's Cuts, in addition to other stories. Born in Shanghai and raised in New Mexico, Chichi took her degree in philosophy but decided that writing about food would be more fun than writing about Plato.

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Updated September 06, 2023

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Menudo Rojo (Mexican Red-Chile Tripe Soup) Recipe (2)

Menudo is a spicy tripe stew from Mexico that features tender-chewy pieces of long-simmered tripe in a hearty broth loaded with hominy and infused with dried red chiles. Toasted, soaked, and blended into the broth, the chiles provide a pungent backdrop to the assertive texture and flavor of the tripe. Honeycomb tripe, the most geometrically beautiful of all four of a cow's stomachs, is a nice choice for menudo due to its tenderness and comparatively shorter cooking time.

Menudo Rojo (Mexican Red-Chile Tripe Soup) Recipe (3)

As an extra precaution to remove overtly gamey flavors, the tripe is scrubbed and parboiled before it is placed in the stew. Provided that you don't have any minuscule cuts on your fingers, scrubbing the tripe with salt and lime juice is an entertaining activity in itself. Like removing a stain from an item of clothing, I use a scrubbing motion to work the salt and lime into the hexagonal weave of the tripe. Split pigs' feet are used in the stew for body and flavor; prior to adding the chiles, the broth of tripe and trotters will be a beautiful milky white thanks to ample gelatin that holds rendered fat in a fairly stable emulsion in the broth.

Menudo Rojo (Mexican Red-Chile Tripe Soup) Recipe (4)

The recipe here calls for dried New Mexico chiles, though guajillos are another great choice. To sop up the flavorful broth of the menudo, serve the soup with freshly-made or high-quality store-bought tortillas.

July 28, 2009

This recipe was cross-tested in 2022 and updated to guarantee best results. For a more flavorful menudo, we added a pork trotter and increased the amount of garlic, onion, dried oregano, chiles, and cumin. We also cut the tripe in larger, 1- to 2-inch pieces and simmered the soup for longer to get silky, tender tripe.

Recipe Details

Menudo Rojo (Mexican Red-Chile Tripe Soup)

Prep35 mins

Cook3 hrs 45 mins

Resting Time:40 mins

Total5 hrs

Serves6 servings

Ingredients

For the Soup:

Directions

For the Soup: Wash and rinse tripe thoroughly in warm water. Place in a large bowl, then sprinkle with lime juice and 1 tablespoon (9g) salt, and scrub vigorously. Let soak 30 minutes, then rinse and wash the tripe again in warm water. Drain.
Cut tripe into 1- to 2-inch pieces. Place tripe and pork trotter in a large stockpot, cover with water by 2 inches, and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes, then drain and rinse. If necessary, wipe out pot.
Return tripe and trotter to stockpot. Add 12 cups (2.8L) water, oregano, bay leaves, 6 garlic cloves, and half of the onion (about 1 cup). Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, skimming surface as needed; then reduce heat to medium-low and partially cover. Simmer gently until tripe is very tender, 2 to 3 hours.
Set a large cast iron or stainless-steel skillet over medium heat. Add cumin seeds and toast, tossing often, until fragrant and slightly darkened, 2 to 3 minutes; remove from skillet and set aside. In same skillet, toast chiles until pliable and slightly darkened, 30 to 60 seconds per side. Tear chiles open; remove and discard stems and seeds. Place chiles in a heatproof bowl, then submerge in boiling water. Cover and let soak until softened, about 15 minutes.
Remove pork trotters and set aside until cool enough to handle; pick off any pieces of meat and return them to pot, discarding bones.
Drain chiles and place them in a blender with remaining onion, 4 cloves garlic, and toasted cumin. Add 2 cups of simmering broth, and blend until very smooth, 1 to 2 minutes; to prevent the hot liquid from erupting violently when blending, make sure to open the vent on the blender lid, hold it covered with a clean kitchen towel, and start the blender at its lowest speed before increasing to high. Strain chile-broth mixture through a fine mesh sieve and stir it back into the soup, along with the hominy. Simmer until hominy is tender and flavors have melded, 20 to 30 minutes. Season to taste with additional salt, if desired.
To Serve: Serve hot with condiments and tortillas on the side, to be used according to personal taste.

Special Equipment

Blender, fine-mesh strainer

Notes

California chiles can be substituted for the New Mexico chiles for less heat, as can guajillo chiles, for more heat.

Soups
Mexican
Chile Pepper