It takes guts to cook menudo, Mexico's satisfying 'soup of the poor'

Puebla Mexican Restaurant’s menudo, poured into dishes at home and with hominy added. — Chuy Renteria/Little Village

On a recent Sunday morning visit to my parents in West Liberty, my mother, an immigrant from northern Mexico, asked me if I wanted some menudo. I was confused at her question, as there was no tell-tale evidence that she had been cooking the soup for the last eight or so hours. Absent were the aromatics that spread throughout the house, or the heat that comes from leaving a pot to simmer overnight.

Instead, she had her cell phone in hand, ready to call in an order. It was a gesture that, as a first-generation kid, was completely foreign to me. She might as well have been holding up a banana and asking if we wanted to fly up to the moon. But after the initial shock dissipated, I thought about the magical rejuvenating qualities of the dish. The saltiness and spice of the deep-red broth, the satisfying snap of bite into a spoonful of hominy and, yes, even the soft, rubbery bites of tripe that define and give the dish its infamy.

And I thought, let me taste this menudo my mom is willing to order out for.

We ordered two bowls of menudo from Puebla Mexican Restaurant, located on West Liberty’s main street since 2017. For full disclosure, I’ll mention that my mom’s sister, Irma De La Paz, runs Puebla with her husband. But if I could offer an argument against potential bias, I’d cite the competitiveness within most any big family with multiple kitchen-savvy siblings. No, if anything, it’s even more remarkable that my mom chose to order from her sister rather than make a pot herself.

Either way, our servings came in big takeout order cups, steaming hot. We poured them out into bowls and, though I may regret saying this the next time I sit down to eat with my mother, I’d be hard pressed to find any discernable difference between Puebla’s menudo and the menudo I grew up with. Present was the broth made from dried guajillo and ancho chiles and the multiple versions of tripe that come from different parts of an animal’s stomach chamber, smooth and honeycomb.

Accompanying our bowls were little makeshift packets of lime, diced onion and jalapeño, as you are meant to individually garnish your bowl to your liking. One thing that was missing were the kernels of hominy that I grew up with in our menudo. It turns out that corn treated in an alkaline solution isn’t on everyone’s menudo prerequisite list. We had some extra cans of the stuff from our local Mexican tienda, and added as needed.

Despite this small omission, our menudo was as delicious as any bowl of the stuff you could make. Replace me with the old dude from Ratatouille, eating a spoonful and portaling through memories of the soup from my childhood. Let’s talk about this quintessential Mexican dish.

Menudo is a many-hundreds-year-old soup that is, at once, a thing of legend and derision for its use of tripe, the intestinal lining of pigs or the stomach lining of a ruminant like a cow or sheep. The question of when tripe was first used and, in essence, when and where menudo was first made, is unknown. According to Nuestra Stories, this is due to the fact that the dish “was never one specific recipe, nor did it come from one specific place. Known as una sopa del pobre, a soup of the poor, it is said that menudo was invented during the pre-revolution era of Mexico as a way to ensure that no part of the animal was wasted.”

The menudo Wikipedia page heavily implies the soup is derived from Spanish cuisine. Other sources say indigenous groups in Mexico were already using tripe and the cooking techniques the dish requires.

The truth is probably that the menudo is a product of indigenous and colonial influences, shaped by people who had to make the most of the livestock on hand. Rather than discard the stomach lining and intestines, people across millennia have been partaking in the hours-long process of breaking down and flavoring the offal. With some heavy flavoring and accoutrement, the soup has been a staple in Mexican culinary traditions.

Which is not to say that it hasn’t had detractors, or permutations that would be easier for an unfamiliar palette to stomach. There is a somewhat unofficial debate that runs from family to family, region to region — do you do menudo or pozole? Pozole is something like a cousin of menudo, the key difference being that pozole is cooked with beef, resulting in a dish that’s something like a Mexican beef stew.

Here’s another thing about menudo that has less to do with historical significance and more with its place in modern culture. You see, menudo is a folk cure for la cruda, also known as the hangover state that afflicts many party-goers after a night of drinking. Since a lot of those nights fall on a Saturday, menudo became the go-to Sunday morning panacea for those poor, dehydrated souls that balled too hard the previous evening.

More than a mere soup, menudo is a Mexican soul food that takes your tastebuds on a trip back in time. It’s a dish you should try at least once in your life, whether you gather some courage and make a batch yourself, or do like we did and call up your local Mexican restaurant. Either way, menudo may just cure what ails ya.