Treviso-style tripe, the Veneto recipe in broth: a soffritto, rosemary and sage, two hours of slow cooking and plenty of grana on top. Serves 4.
Introduction
Treviso-style tripe is tripe in broth, and that is what sets it apart from the other tripe dishes of Italy. In Rome and Florence tripe is cooked in tomato sauce and reaches the table thick, to be eaten with a fork. In Treviso, by contrast, it is served in a bowl, immersed in the meat broth it has cooked in for hours, with a mountain of grated grana on top and a slice of toasted bread underneath: you eat it with a spoon, and it is a soup even before it is a main course. Tripe is the stomach of the cow, one of the cuts of the quinto quarto, the "fifth quarter" left over after the prime cuts: it costs little, but it needs time, because only long, slow cooking makes it tender without turning it mushy.
The method is simple and almost all waiting. The tripe is bought already cleaned and pre-cooked from the butcher, as has always been done in the Veneto, cut into strips and blanched for a moment in boiling water. Then it takes on flavour in a soffritto of butter, onion, carrot and celery with rosemary and sage, and cooks covered in the broth for two hours, until it is tender. The real work takes twenty minutes, and the bowl is finished with grana and freshly ground black pepper.
In the glass we put the Cabernet Sauvignon Riserva Piave D.O.C. by Italo Cescon, a red born along the Piave, a few kilometres from Treviso, whose tannin dries out the gelatine of the tripe. For those who eat it as they do in Treviso, in the middle of the morning, there is the Nonno G. Prosecco D.O.C. aged on the lees by Vini Micel. Alongside, a small plate of Red radicchio in extra virgin olive oil by SoloTreviso.
The Story of Treviso-Style Tripe
Tripe is an ancient, humble food, and throughout the Veneto it shared the same fate for centuries: families who could not afford the best cuts of beef bought the offal, which the butcher sold cheaply, and turned it into a feast-day dish with time and patience. Washing, scraping and boiling the raw stomach was long work, and that is why many towns had a trippaio, the tripe seller, who cleaned and pre-cooked the tripe and sold it ready to cook. It is the reason why even today, in the Veneto, tripe is bought already white and pre-cooked.
In Treviso tripe took the road of broth. In the osterie of the town centre and on market days it was the hot dish of the morning: whoever arrived from the countryside or finished a work shift sat down in front of a bowl of steaming tripe with grana and a glass of wine, long before midday. It is a habit that a few osterie still keep alive, and it gave the dish its shape: plenty of broth, cheese to cover it, bread to soak it up. At home, on the other hand, tripe in broth was the dish of the cold months, cooked slowly on the stove, and every family had its own touch: a spoonful of tomato paste, an extra knob of butter, sage instead of rosemary.
Ingredients
For the tripe
- cleaned, pre-cooked beef tripe (a mix of blanket and honeycomb)1 kg
- butter40 g
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil Veneto del Grappa 250 ml2 tablespoons
- onion1
- carrot1
- celery1 stick
- rosemary1 sprig
- sage5 leaves
- bay leaves2 leaves
- hot meat broth1,5 l
- salt and black pepperto taste
To serve
- grated grana80 g
- day-old country bread, sliced160 g
Nutritional Values per Serving
Values calculated from the recipe's ingredients using the CREA food composition tables, and from the labels of our products where available. They are an estimate per serving, not a laboratory analysis.
Equipment Needed
- Large heavy-based pot with a lid
- Pot for blanching the tripe
- Colander
- Sharp knife and chopping board
- Ladle
- Deep soup bowls
Tip: The right pot is earthenware or cast iron, with a heavy base: the tripe must simmer for two hours without ever boiling hard, and a thin base, over a low heat, heats in patches and makes it stick. It must be tall enough to keep the tripe covered by the broth, because the part left out of the liquid dries out and toughens.
How to Make Treviso-Style Tripe — Veneto Recipe
The tripe
Rinse the tripe well under cold water and cut it into strips one centimetre wide and five or six long. Bring a pot of water to the boil, drop in the tripe and let it blanch for five minutes, then drain it and run it under cold water again. Meanwhile heat the broth in another pot and keep it hot.
Chef's tip: Blanching removes the strong smell that pre-cooked tripe sometimes keeps: if it still smells strong after the five minutes, repeat it with fresh water.
The soffritto
Finely chop the onion, carrot and celery. In the heavy-based pot heat the butter with the oil over a low heat, add the chopped vegetables with the rosemary and sage and let them soften for ten minutes, stirring, without letting them colour. Add the drained tripe, raise the heat a little and let it take on flavour for five minutes, turning it so that it is coated all over.
Chef's tip: The soffritto must stay golden: if the onion burns, the broth takes on a bitter taste that two hours of cooking will never remove.
The cooking
Pour the hot broth into the pot until the tripe is well covered, add the bay leaves, cover and cook over a low heat for two hours, stirring now and then and adding broth if it dries out. The tripe is ready when it is tender to the bite but still a little springy. At the end remove the sprig of rosemary and the bay leaves and season with salt and pepper.
Chef's tip: Keep the broth plentiful: at the end the tripe should swim in a lightly clouded, flavourful liquid, like a soup, and not sit in a thick sauce.
At the table
Toast the slices of bread in the oven or on a griddle and put one in the bottom of each bowl. Ladle the tripe over it with its boiling broth, sprinkle with a generous handful of grated grana and a grinding of black pepper, and bring to the table at once, with the rest of the grana on the side.
Chef's tip: The grana goes into the bowl and not into the pot: melted in the boiling broth it turns stringy and sticks to the bottom, while on top of the bowl it forms a soft crust that you stir in with the spoon.
Wine to Pair with Treviso-Style Tripe
Treviso-style tripe is a dish in broth, and that changes everything when it comes to choosing the wine. Three things arrive in the spoon together. The tripe, which after two hours of slow cooking is tender but still a little springy, and which releases its collagen into the broth: the mouth is left coated, almost sticky. The meat broth, hot and savoury, scented by the soffritto, the rosemary and the sage. And the grated grana on top, plenty of it, which adds salt and fat. So the wine is asked to dissolve that film and to keep pace with the savouriness of the cheese, without weighing down a dish that is already hot and eaten by the spoonful. There are two routes: the tannin of a structured red, which dries out the gelatine, or the acidity and bubbles of a light wine, which wash it away. We propose a red from the Piave, the same land as the tripe, a col fondo for those who eat it as they do in Treviso, in the middle of the morning, and a pale beer.
The Red We Recommend
Cabernet Sauvignon Riserva Piave D.O.C. — Italo Cescon — The **Cabernet Sauvignon Riserva Piave D.O.C. by Italo Cescon** is born a few kilometres from Treviso, from forty-year-old vines at Fagarè della Battaglia, on clay soils along the Piave, and the producer themselves recommend it with Veneto-style tripe. It matures for twenty-four months in oak barrels and another twelve in bottle, and reaches the glass warm and dry, with forest fruits, spices and a long finish. Two things work on the tripe. The tannin, by now smoothed by the long ageing, binds to the collagen the tripe leaves in the mouth and dries it out, so every spoonful lands on a clean palate. And the natural freshness the producer describes on the palate stands up to the savouriness of the grana, which on a soft, low-acid red would leave a bitter impression. The limit has to be stated clearly: at 15% vol it is a wine of great warmth, and next to a boiling broth the alcohol is felt more. It gives its best with the drier version of the tripe, the one with little broth and the spoonful of tomato paste, or as the wine for Sunday lunch, in a small glass. Serve it at 18-20 °C, taken out of the cellar the day before as the producer advises, and pour it into large glasses.
Want to know more about the grape? our guide to Cabernet
The Bottle-Fermented Sparkling Wine
Nonno G. Prosecco D.O.C. affinato sui lieviti — Vini Micel — The second route is that of the Treviso osterie, where tripe is also eaten in the middle of the morning with a glass of white. The **Nonno G. by Vini Micel** is a Prosecco D.O.C. made from Glera grown in the hills of the Pedemontana, refermented in the bottle without added yeasts and left on its lees, which settle at the bottom: it is the col fondo wine of the country tradition. It reaches the tripe by the opposite route to the Cabernet. It does not dry out the gelatine with tannin, it washes it away with acidity and bubbles, and the bubbles do the same job on the fat of the grana. The very low residual sugar, 1 gram per litre, keeps it dry, and the notes of apple and bread crust sit well beside the broth and the toasted bread. The 11% vol is an advantage on a hot dish: you can drink it without it weighing you down. The limit: it is a light wine, and with the richer version, with tomato and little broth, it fades somewhat next to the dish. Rule of thumb: tripe in plenty of broth, col fondo; drier tripe, Cabernet. Serve it at 8-10 °C and, if you want the wine clear, pour it slowly, leaving the lees in the bottle; in the tradition they are stirred in, and the wine becomes cloudy and more savoury.
Want to learn more? our guide to col fondo
Craft Beer as an Alternative
Bold Helles Beer — Norah's Farm — Those who prefer beer will find a simple ally in the **Bold Helles by Norah's Farm**. It is a bottom-fermented blonde in the German style, easy-drinking, with a delicate taste of malted grain and a slightly dry, bitter finish. The malt sits beside the meat broth without covering it, the carbonation and the creamy head clean the gelatine of the tripe from the mouth, and the light bitterness of the finish dries out the fat of the grana. The limit is the body: it is a light beer, 4,8% vol, and with the version with tomato and little broth it stays a step behind the dish. Serve it at 6-8 °C, in a tall glass.
Want to know more about the style? pale craft beers
Serve It With
Tripe in broth is hot, soft and rich with cheese, and alongside it wants something that gives it a bitter, sour contrast. In Treviso the answer is red radicchio, the city's own vegetable, whose season begins in autumn. The Red radicchio in extra virgin olive oil by SoloTreviso is the heart of the radicchio, processed cold with water, salt, vinegar and spices and then preserved whole in oil: it keeps a fleshy, crunchy texture and a taste that is sweet and bitter at once. Served on a small plate beside the bowl, the bitterness of the radicchio and the vinegar clean the grana and the gelatine of the tripe from the mouth, and every spoonful feels like the first.
The bread is part of the recipe, but you can bring more to the table to soak up the broth: country bread made from soft wheat, a day old and toasted, is the right one, because it absorbs the broth without falling apart. A salad of fresh radicchio dressed with oil and vinegar, at the end of the meal, rounds off a dish like this well.
Variations
- With tomato: many families add a spoonful of tomato paste to the soffritto along with the tripe, dissolved in a ladle of broth. The broth turns pinkish and rounder, and the tripe comes closer to those of other regions while staying in broth.
- Au gratin: for a drier version, cook the tripe with less broth, letting it reduce in the last half hour, then pour it into an ovenproof dish, cover it with grana and put it under the oven grill for a few minutes, until the cheese forms a crust.
- In the pressure cooker: after the soffritto and the broth, the tripe cooks in forty minutes from when the valve hisses instead of two hours. The result is a little softer, and the broth should be tasted and adjusted at the end, because it does not reduce.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between Treviso-style tripe and other tripe dishes?
Treviso-style tripe is served in broth, in a bowl, with grated grana on top and toasted bread underneath: you eat it with a spoon, like a soup. Roman-style and Florentine-style tripe, on the other hand, cook in tomato sauce and reach the table thick, to be eaten with a fork.
Which tripe should you use?
In the Veneto it is bought from the butcher already cleaned and pre-cooked, white. The most used parts are the blanket tripe, fleshy and smooth, and the honeycomb tripe, which holds the broth better: a mix of the two gives the best result. Raw tripe, which needs cleaning, takes hours of extra work and is hard to find.
How long does tripe need to cook?
Pre-cooked tripe from the butcher needs about two hours of slow cooking in the broth, over a low heat and with the lid on. It is ready when it is tender but still a little springy to the bite. The time varies from one tripe to another: it is worth tasting it after an hour and a half.
How do you get rid of the smell of tripe?
Pre-cooked tripe has already been washed at length, but it sometimes keeps a strong smell. You remove it by rinsing it well under cold water and blanching it for five minutes in boiling water before cooking, repeating the step with fresh water if needed. The soffritto and the herbs do the rest.
Can it be made the day before?
Yes, and in fact it gets better. Cook the tripe following the recipe, let it cool and keep it in the fridge in its broth, covered, for up to two days. When it is time to serve, reheat it gently, adding a ladle of broth if it has thickened, and finish it in the bowls with the bread and the grana.
