Traditional red broth soup with beef tripe.
Menudo is tripe soup and it is one of the most polarizing dishes in Mexican cooking. People who grew up eating it love it with a devotion that is almost religious. People who encounter it for the first time without warning sometimes do not come back. The tripe — beef stomach — simmers in a red chile broth for four to six hours until it goes from something that smells like a barn to something that smells like a braise and has a texture somewhere between tender leather and soft cartilage. It is the traditional hangover cure across northern Mexico and the American Southwest, served in restaurants and homes on Saturday and Sunday mornings specifically for people who need it. The combination of fat, collagen, chile, hominy, and lime is not coincidentally restorative — the broth is genuinely one of the most mineral-rich things you can consume, and the lime acid and chile heat do exactly what a body that has been through a difficult evening needs.