Pepperpot (Soup)

Pepperpot (Soup)

Making the soup

Wash the tripe three times in ice water.

Place tripe and stew beef in a soup pan (we used a Crock pot slow cooker) and add sufficient water to just cover the tripe and beef. Place a cover on the pan (or the lid on the Crock pot) and simmer on light boil (high setting on Crock pot) for at least 4 hours. You may do this the day before actually preparing the soup.

Remove the tripe and beef from the broth and cool. Cut the tripe into small pieces (1/2 inch or less). Set aside.

Discard the broth. Put fresh beef broth and water in the pot. Put the onions and bayleaf in the broth and simmer for 1 hour (Crock pot on high setting).

Add the potatoes, carrots, garlic, pot herbs, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce (cayenne and red pepper, if desired). Simmer for 1 hour (Crock pot on high setting) or more until potatoes and carrots are soft.

Making the dumplings

While your soup is simmering, make dumplings.

Place the flour in a mixing bowl. Slice the butter into small pieces and add to the flour (as you would do with pastry). Work the fat into the flour. Add a few tablespoons of ice water and bring the mixture together. Add additional water a tablespoon at a time to make a soft paste. With floured hands, pinch off bits of dough an roll between the hands to make a ball 1/2 inch in diameter.

When all the dough has been formed into little balls, drop the dumplings into the soup, one at a time.

Cover the soup pan and allow to cook for five minutes.

Serve. Crushed red pepper, cayenne, sriracha, or other hot sauce may be added as desired.

Commentary

As mentioned, we made our soup in a Crock pot slow cooker set on “high” for all steps, which worked fine. The Crock pot only reached a very slow boil (as is the way of crockpots). When we added the dumplings, it was clear that they were not fully cooked after the 5 minutes suggested by the recipe, so we left them in for at least 10 minutes.

We had issues with the dumplings - they came out very gloppy (and got referred to as "the glops" for the rest of the meal), didn't really seem to be fully cooked, and ended up being fished out the Pepperpot. We suspect a few possible changes to their execution might help.

In the original recipe, the dumplings were made with flour, water, and suet. We didn't have much interest in pilfering the bird feeder, so we opted for butter as the fat source. The butter probably should have been frozen to hold the dough form (as is the case with pastry). Our butter was room temperature and made a dough that came together without nearly any of the ice water called for. Placing the formed but uncooked dumplings in the freezer for a half hour or so might also have helped.

The dumplings might have come out better if they had been cooked in a hot, rolling boil, perhaps done in a separate, smaller pot of water and then added to the crockpot.

Regardless, we were very happy with the soup (sans dumplings), and we have lots of tasty leftover soup.

For those purists among you, the original recipe taken from The New Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook by Ruth Hutchison (1969) is appended herewith:

2 lbs tripe

2 lbs honeycomb tripe

1 veal knuckle

2 small onions

1 bay leaf

4 potatoes

1 bunch pot herbs

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

1 red pepper

1/2 lb beef suet

2 cups flour

2 tsp parsley, minced

Wash tripe 3 times in ice water. Cover and boil slowly for a long time. The old recipes said 6-8 hours, but 4 will. do. Cool, remove from water, and cut into small pieces. Wash the veal, put in a kettle, and cover with water, simmer slowly for 3hours, skinning [fat] frequently. Remove from water, cut veal away from the bones and into small pieces. Set aside. Strain the broth and return to the kettle. Add chopped onion and bay leaf, simmer for another hour. Add the diced potatoes. Use whatever pot herbs you prefer or, if you use dried herbs,tie them in a bag and remove later. Add veal, tripe and seasoning. Make dumplings by blending suet (or same amount of butter) with flour and adding a little salt. Add just enough ice water to make a paste that can be rolled with floured fingers into balls the size of walnuts. Handle the dumplings lightly, sprinkle with a little flour and drop into the bubbling soup. Simmer for 5 minutes, the kettle covered. Don't peek. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Serves 6.

Read the Pepperpot Blog Entry

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