Tripe Batter
1 cup Gold Medal flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup cold water 1 egg 1/2 tablespoon vinegar 1 teaspoon melted butter Mix flour and salt, add the water gradually. When perfectly smooth add the beaten egg, vinegar and butter.
This is a coating batter, not a dish in itself: the tripe is boiled tender first, cut into strips or squares, dipped, and fried. The original assumes you already know that part.
- The tripe comes firstSupermarket honeycomb tripe is cleaned and blanched but not cooked through. Simmer it 1½ to 3 hours until a knife goes in easily, then cool, dry it thoroughly and cut into serving pieces. Batter will slide off wet or underdone tripe.
- ConsistencyOne cup of flour to half a cup of water plus an egg gives a thick, clinging batter, closer to pancake than tempura. If it is too stiff to coat evenly, add water a teaspoon at a time.
- Why the vinegarA half tablespoon of acid is generally held to slightly weaken the gluten, so the coating fries crisp rather than bready; some cooks also find it tempers the flavor of the offal. Cider or white vinegar both work; do not increase it.
- Rest the batterTwenty to thirty minutes at room temperature lets the flour hydrate and the mixing gluten relax, which reduces the tendency of a thick egg batter to blister and peel away in the fat.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe gives no frying instruction. Use 365–375°F; below that the batter absorbs grease, above it the coating browns before the interior sets. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop.
- YieldEnough to coat roughly 1 to 1½ lb of cooked tripe, serving three or four. The batter does not keep well overnight once the egg is in.
Tripe was cheap, filling protein in American kitchens well into the twentieth century, and a book like the Gold Medal Flour cook book — published by Washburn Crosby to sell flour — had an obvious interest in showing readers one more thing to dip in batter. Battered and fried tripe belongs to a long English and American habit of treating boiled offal as a base for a second, crisper dish. Tripe fell out of general American use after mid-century as organ meats lost status, though it remains standard in Mexican, Italian and Chinese cooking, where it is usually simmered rather than fried.