Where to find tripe, blood sausage, etc?
I'm having a big potluck with some friends and I was planning on making a Spanish style stew with tripe, blood sausage, pork belly, and possibly some chorizo. Problem is, I have no idea where to find tripe and blood sausage. Anyone have any suggestions? Is this stuff usually very expensive? UWS is preferable, but I'm open to making a trip anywhere downtown or on the east side if need be. Also, this is my first time cooking with this kind of meat so any cooking tips are appreciated as well! Thank you!
By dizco
on Aug 18, 2011 08:17 AM
View »
Despana, a Spanish grocery, has excellent blood sausage and chorizo. They make it in their factory in Queens. They might be able to advise on cooking tips, too. For tripe, I am not sure they have it there, but might be able to point you in a butcher's direction.
-----
Despana
408 Broome St, New York, NY 10013
Permalink | Reply
Thanks! I'll definitely check this place out. Aside from the meat, the sandwiches there look amazing.
Permalink | Reply
Are you following a recipe or trying to improvise? Tripe and pork belly need a long slow braise. Blood sausage would fall apart in the meantime so you have very different cooking times. Tripe can really be like chewing rubber if its not cooked long enough. Still have flashbacks of coming home from school and seeing a huge thing of tripe soaking in the kitchen sink that mom was making for dinner. Shudder.
Permalink | Reply
Well, I was inspired to make a dish like this after seeing it on the Madrid episode of No Reservations. I found a recipe for a similar stew in Atis' "Spanish Cooking" book and I was going to adapt it to include a recipe for tripe that I found. Since I've never cooked with this meat before, I'm going to try my best not to feed my friends chewy rubber. Thanks for the tip!
Permalink | Reply
You can get good honeycomb tripe at Fairway. On occasion I've also seen it at Pioneer. Near Despana, you can get several kinds of tripe in Chinatown, as well as pork belly. As kathryn recommends, Despana makes terrific onion morcilla, but I also find that grilling the Dominican/Puerto Rican version of morcilla also makes for good callos. You can find that at Associated, Western Beef.
A word of advice if you're new to cooking with morcilla and tripe: you might want to try cooking the tripe the night prior to your dinner. I used to make callos a la madrilena fairly regularly and boiling the tripe can make for a rather ripe smelling dinner party. As Bkeats says, add your morcilla towards the end, otherwise you end up with a black stew. Adding pork trotters to the stew will make up for the tripe's lack of body and give your broth a silky texture.
-----
Despana
408 Broome St, New York, NY 10013
Western Beef
431 W 16th St, New York, NY 10011
Permalink | Reply