Slow Cooker Callos
Recipe byA popular party dish in Filipino households, callos often makes an appearance on Christmas and New Year. Make callos on the slow cooker for better flavors and convenience.
Ingredients
- 500 grams honeycomb or blanket beef tripe (see notes after the recipe)
- 700 grams beef kneecap (or use beef leg which is more traditional)
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- 6 cups bone broth
- 1 to 2 chorizo de Bilbao sliced into rings
- 2 tablespoons minced garlic
- ½ cup chopped onion
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 sprig oregano stripped
- 2 bird’s eye chilies finely sliced
- ⅓ cup tomato paste
- salt
- pepper
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- ½ cup cubed carrot
- ½ cup diced bell peppers
- ½ cup canned chickpeas well drained
- ¼ cup sliced olives (optional but recommended)
Instructions
- Place the tripe and kneecap (bones and all) in a pot. Cover with water and add a tablespoon of vinegar.
- Boil on the stovetop for 10 minutes.
- Drain the tripe and kneecap, and rinse well under the tap.
- Place the tripe and kneecap in the slow cooker.
- Pour in enough broth to cover.
- Cook on HIGH for three hours.
- Scoop out the tripe and kneecap.
- They will still be tough at this stage so use a sturdy knife. Cut the tripe into strips about an inch wide.
- Separate the kneecap bones from the meat and tendons. Cut the meat and tendons into strips.
- Take a cup of broth from the slow cooker and stir the tomato paste in it.
- Put the tripe and kneecap (including the bones) back into the slow cooker.
- Add the chorizo, garlic, onion, bay leaf, oregano, chilies and diluted tomato paste.
- Season with salt and pepper. Stir.
- Set the slow cooker to LOW and cook for another 12 hours.
- Heat the olive oil in a pot. Add the carrot cubes, diced bell peppers, chickpeas and olives.
- Cook over medium heat until the carrot cubes are cooked but still a little crisp.
- Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
- Fish out the bones from the slow cooker and discard.
- Pour the contents of the slow cooker into the pot with the vegetables. Stir.
- Cook just until simmering.
- Serve your slow cooker callos with rice or bread.
Notes
There are three kinds of tripe. All come from the cow’s stomach but each is from a different chamber.
There’s honeycomb tripe (so-called because the surface looks like a honeycomb), blanket tripe (smoother surface) and book or leaf tripe (thin leaves attached together on one side).
I’ve often used honeycomb tripe to cook callos in the past but I have discovered that blanket tripe is a better choice. It has more of that melts-like-butter texture when cooked to ultra tenderness.
Tripe is commonly bleached with a chlorine solution before it is sold. It’s a cleaning process more than anything else. But bleaching also gives tripe its whitish appearance. Pre-boiling the tripe with a little vinegar before cooking removes any lingering odor of chlorine.