[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":398},["ShallowReactive",2],{"recipe:ciorba-de-burta":3,"recipe:country:romania":187},{"slug":4,"title":5,"nativeName":6,"pronunciation":7,"countrySlug":8,"emoji":9,"summary":10,"intro":11,"story":12,"whyThis":13,"tips":18,"substitutions":25,"variations":38,"serveWith":48,"storage":50,"faq":51,"equipment":67,"baseServings":72,"prepMinutes":73,"cookMinutes":74,"difficulty":75,"course":76,"diet":78,"mainIngredients":79,"ingredients":85,"instructions":142,"nutrition":168,"images":174,"keywords":178,"publishedAt":185,"updatedAt":185,"authorSlug":186},"ciorba-de-burta","Ciorbă de Burtă (Romanian Sour Cream Tripe Soup)","Ciorbă de burtă","CHOR-buh deh BOOR-tuh","romania","🍲","Veal tripe simmered until silky, then bound into a pale ivory broth with egg yolks and sour cream and sharpened with vinegar. Garlic sauce and hot chillies go on at the table.","Ciorbă de burtă is a pale, almost milky soup of veal tripe cut into fine strips, simmered for hours in a root-vegetable broth and finished with a liaison of egg yolks and sour cream. It tastes rich and gently sour rather than gamey: the long simmer strips out any barnyard note, the vinegar goes in at the end to sharpen everything, and the tripe itself ends up tender with a slight springy chew. It is Romania's classic restorative — the thing ordered at two in the morning outside a Bucharest club, and the thing eaten the following afternoon to repair the damage. Raw garlic sauce and whole pickled chillies come alongside so each person can push it as hot and pungent as they like.","Tripe soup belongs to a family that stretches across the old Ottoman world, from Turkish işkembe çorbası to Bulgarian shkembe chorba and Greek patsas, and every version of it is night food. In Romania the shape it took is distinctly local: veal rather than lamb tripe, a broth built on carrot, parsnip, celeriac and onion, and a finish of egg yolks beaten with smântână — the same dregea used to enrich many Romanian soups — instead of the milk-and-garlic method further south. The result is paler, thicker and less sharp on the nose than its Balkan cousins.\n\nThe soup has an unusually urban identity. Bucharest's beer halls and late-opening restaurants built their reputations partly on it, and a good ciorbă de burtă was a serious point of pride for a kitchen, since nothing hides a rushed job: undercooked tripe is rubbery, an overheated liaison curdles into grainy threads, and too much vinegar flattens the whole bowl. Older cooks judged a restaurant on the colour alone — it should be ivory, not grey and not yellow.\n\nWhat makes it work is the pairing of a very rich base with two aggressive table condiments. Mujdei, a raw garlic sauce loosened with water, oil or broth, is stirred in by the spoonful, and pickled or fresh hot chillies are bitten between mouthfuls. That contrast is not an afterthought; the soup is deliberately under-seasoned for garlic and heat so the eater sets both. Modern Romanian kitchens increasingly buy tripe already cleaned and pre-boiled, which cuts hours off the work and removes the single most off-putting part of the process, and nobody serious objects.",[14,15,16,17],"Long, low simmer with aromatics in the water, so the tripe finishes tender and clean-tasting rather than rubbery.","Tempering method for the egg-and-sour-cream liaison spelled out step by step, which is where most home attempts curdle.","Vinegar added off the heat and tasted in stages, the way Romanian cooks actually sour a ciorbă.","Honest guidance on buying pre-cleaned tripe and on what the raw product should smell like.",[19,20,21,22,23,24],"Buy tripe that is already cleaned and blanched — it will be pale and smell faintly of nothing much. If it smells strongly of the farmyard through the packaging, buy elsewhere.","Give it a first boil of 10 minutes in plain water, then drain and rinse and start again with fresh water. That single step removes most of the cloudiness and any lingering smell.","Cut the tripe into strips no wider than a matchstick after cooking, not before — hot tripe cuts cleanly, and pre-cut strips curl during the simmer.","Take the pot fully off the heat before the liaison goes in, and never let it boil afterwards. Boiling scrambles the yolks into grains.","Add vinegar a tablespoon at a time and taste between additions. The soup should read sour enough to notice but not sharp enough to sting.","Make the mujdei with raw garlic crushed to a paste with salt, not chopped — chopped garlic gives you hot fragments instead of an even pungency.",[26,30,34],{"original":27,"swap":28,"note":29},"Veal tripe","Beef honeycomb tripe","Widely available and behaves the same way, though it takes about 30 minutes longer to reach tenderness and has a slightly firmer bite.",{"original":31,"swap":32,"note":33},"Smântână","Full-fat sour cream or crème fraîche","The fat is doing structural work — it protects the yolks from splitting. Anything under about 20% fat is a genuine risk in this soup.",{"original":35,"swap":36,"note":37},"White wine vinegar","Lemon juice, or 200 ml borș (fermented wheat bran liquid) added and brought briefly to the boil before the liaison","Borș is the traditional souring agent for most ciorbe, though vinegar is standard in this particular one. Lemon is milder and needs more of it.",[39,42,45],{"name":40,"description":41},"Ciorbă de burtă cu picior de vițel","A veal trotter simmered alongside the tripe, adding gelatine that thickens the broth to a near-syrupy body. The version most old Bucharest restaurants made.",{"name":43,"description":44},"Balkan-style, without the liaison","Finished with milk and a garlic-vinegar mixture instead of the egg-and-cream dregea, giving a thinner, sharper soup closer to Bulgarian shkembe chorba.",{"name":46,"description":47},"Ciorbă rădăuțeană","The chicken soup invented in Rădăuți as a milder stand-in for tripe soup: same ivory look, same garlic and vinegar finish, shredded chicken breast instead of tripe.",[49],"Mujdei de usturoi, whole pickled hot peppers and good white bread for wiping the bowl.","The soup keeps 3 days refrigerated but must be reheated with care: warm it gently to steaming and never let it reach a boil, or the liaison separates into grainy curds. If you plan to keep it, consider cooking the tripe and broth fully, refrigerating that, and adding the egg-and-cream finish only to the portion you are about to serve. It does not freeze — the emulsion breaks on thawing and cannot be brought back.",[52,55,58,61,64],{"question":53,"answer":54},"Where do I buy tripe and what kind do I need?","Ask a butcher for cleaned honeycomb tripe, from veal if you can get it, from beef otherwise. Most tripe sold in Europe today is already scalded, scraped and bleached, so it arrives pale and nearly odourless and only needs rinsing plus a short first boil. Some Balkan and Turkish shops sell it pre-boiled, which cuts two hours off the cooking.",{"question":56,"answer":57},"Why did my soup curdle?","The egg-and-sour-cream liaison went into liquid that was too hot, or the pot returned to a boil afterwards. Take the pot off the heat entirely, ladle hot broth into the egg mixture a little at a time while whisking so it warms gradually, then pour that back in and keep the soup below simmering point from then on.",{"question":59,"answer":60},"How long does tripe really need to cook?","Between two and three hours at a gentle simmer for veal tripe, longer for beef. Test it by biting a strip: it should be tender with a slight springiness, like cooked squid rather than like elastic. Undercooked tripe stays stubbornly rubbery and no amount of finishing will rescue it, so give it time rather than a fixed clock.",{"question":62,"answer":63},"What is mujdei and can I skip it?","Mujdei is a Romanian raw garlic sauce — garlic crushed to a paste with salt and loosened with water, oil or a little broth. It is stirred into the soup at the table and is close to essential here, because the soup itself is deliberately mild so that each person sets their own garlic level. Skipping it leaves the bowl tasting flat and one-note.",{"question":65,"answer":66},"Can I make a version without tripe?","Yes, and Romanians already did. Ciorbă rădăuțeană uses shredded chicken breast in the same ivory broth with the same egg-and-cream liaison, garlic and vinegar finish. It was created specifically for people who wanted the flavour profile without the tripe, and it is now a classic in its own right rather than a compromise.",[68,69,70,71],"Large stockpot","Fine sieve","Whisk","Mortar or garlic press",6,25,180,"medium",[77],"soup",[],[80,81,82,83,84],"tripe","sour-cream","eggs","garlic","carrot",[86,91,95,98,103,105,108,111,116,120,123,128,132,136,139],{"ref":80,"qty":87,"unit":88,"name":89,"group":90},1,"kg","cleaned veal or beef honeycomb tripe","For the broth",{"ref":92,"qty":87,"unit":93,"name":94,"group":90},"onion","piece","onion, halved",{"ref":84,"qty":96,"unit":93,"name":97,"group":90},2,"carrots, whole",{"ref":99,"qty":100,"unit":101,"name":102,"group":90},"celeriac",200,"g","celeriac, in large chunks",{"qty":87,"unit":93,"name":104,"group":90},"parsnip, whole",{"ref":106,"qty":96,"unit":93,"name":107,"group":90},"bay-leaf","bay leaves",{"qty":87,"unit":109,"name":110,"group":90},"tsp","whole black peppercorns",{"qty":112,"unit":113,"name":114,"noScale":115,"group":90},2.5,"l","water",true,{"ref":82,"qty":117,"unit":93,"name":118,"group":119},3,"egg yolks","For the liaison",{"ref":81,"qty":121,"unit":101,"name":122,"group":119},300,"smântână or full-fat sour cream",{"ref":124,"qty":117,"unit":125,"name":126,"group":127},"vinegar","tbsp","white wine vinegar, plus more to taste","To finish",{"qty":129,"unit":130,"name":131,"group":127},null,"to taste","salt",{"ref":83,"qty":72,"unit":133,"name":134,"group":135},"clove","garlic, crushed to a paste with a pinch of salt","For the mujdei",{"qty":137,"unit":125,"name":138,"group":135},4,"warm broth or water, to loosen the garlic paste",{"qty":137,"unit":93,"name":140,"group":141},"whole pickled hot peppers","To serve",[143,147,152,155,158,162,165],{"title":144,"text":145,"timerSeconds":146},"Blanch the tripe","Rinse {qty:tripe} of tripe under cold running water, put it in a pot, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Boil hard for 10 minutes, then drain, rinse the tripe and wash out the pot. This one step is what keeps the finished soup pale instead of grey.",600,{"title":148,"text":149,"timerSeconds":150,"tip":151},"Simmer with the aromatics","Return the tripe to the clean pot with the fresh water, onion, carrots, celeriac, parsnip, bay leaves and peppercorns. Bring to the boil, skim off the grey foam, then drop to a bare simmer and cook uncovered for 2 to 2 hours 30 minutes, until a strip of tripe bites tender with a slight spring.",8100,"Skim in the first 15 minutes and the broth stays clear. Skim late and the scum has already broken up into it.",{"title":153,"text":154},"Strain and cut","Lift out the tripe and set it on a board. Strain the broth through a fine sieve into a clean pot and discard the vegetables, which have given everything they have. While the tripe is still hot, slice it into strips no wider than a matchstick.",{"title":156,"text":157},"Return and season","Put the strips back into the strained broth, bring to a gentle simmer and season with salt. You should have about 2 litres of liquid; if it has reduced further, top up with hot water.",{"title":159,"text":160,"tip":161},"Temper the liaison","Whisk the egg yolks and sour cream together in a bowl. Take the pot completely off the heat, then ladle in hot broth one ladle at a time, whisking constantly, until the bowl is warm and loose — about four ladles. Pour the mixture back into the pot in a steady stream, stirring as you go.","Rushing this is the single most common way to ruin the soup. Warm the bowl gradually and it will not split.",{"title":163,"text":164,"timerSeconds":146},"Sour it and rest","Stir in the vinegar a tablespoon at a time, tasting after each, until the soup is clearly sour but not sharp. Return it to low heat only long enough to steam — it must not boil again. Let it sit 10 minutes before serving.",{"title":166,"text":167},"Serve with garlic and chilli","Loosen the crushed garlic with the warm broth to make mujdei. Ladle the soup into deep bowls and bring the garlic sauce and pickled peppers to the table so everyone stirs in their own. Bread is not optional here.",{"calories":169,"protein":170,"carbs":171,"fat":172,"fiber":87,"sodium":173,"estimated":115},340,27,9,22,950,[175],{"src":176,"alt":177},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Fciorba-de-burta\u002Fhero.svg","Deep bowl of ivory-coloured Romanian tripe soup with fine tripe strips, garlic sauce and a whole hot pepper alongside",[179,180,181,182,183,184],"ciorba de burta","tripe soup","romanian","sour soup","mujdei","hangover food","2026-08-20","dishroute-kitchen",{"items":188,"total":395,"page":87,"limit":396,"hasMore":397},[189,216,223,251,272,295,315,337,355,371],{"slug":190,"title":191,"nativeName":192,"countrySlug":8,"baseServings":72,"prepMinutes":193,"cookMinutes":194,"restMinutes":195,"difficulty":196,"course":197,"diet":199,"mainIngredients":203,"images":206,"keywords":210,"publishedAt":185,"updatedAt":185,"authorSlug":186},"ciolan-cu-fasole","Ciolan Afumat cu Fasole (Smoked Pork Knuckle with Beans)","Ciolan afumat cu 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cream","bulz",{"slug":273,"title":274,"nativeName":275,"countrySlug":8,"baseServings":137,"prepMinutes":73,"cookMinutes":227,"restMinutes":276,"difficulty":196,"course":277,"diet":279,"mainIngredients":280,"images":284,"keywords":288,"publishedAt":185,"updatedAt":185,"authorSlug":186},"mici","Mici (Romanian Grilled Garlic Meat Rolls)","Mici \u002F Mititei",720,[278,198],"street-food",[200,202],[281,282,83,283],"ground-beef","lamb","black-pepper",[285],{"src":286,"alt":287},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Fmici\u002Fhero.svg","Charred skinless grilled meat rolls on a smoking charcoal grill with mustard and white bread beside them",[273,289,290,291,292,293,294],"mititei","romanian grill","skinless sausage","gratar","street 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with Polenta and Egg)","Tochitură moldovenească",70,[198],[201,202],[345,346,83,82,260],"pork-shoulder","kielbasa",[348],{"src":349,"alt":350},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Ftochitura\u002Fhero.svg","Plate of browned pork cubes and sausage in glossy sauce over yellow polenta, topped with sheep cheese and a fried egg",[338,352,181,267,353,354,269],"pork stew","fried egg","moldavian",{"slug":356,"title":357,"nativeName":358,"countrySlug":8,"baseServings":72,"prepMinutes":73,"cookMinutes":341,"difficulty":196,"course":359,"diet":360,"mainIngredients":361,"images":362,"keywords":366,"publishedAt":185,"updatedAt":185,"authorSlug":186},"varza-a-la-cluj","Varză à la Cluj (Transylvanian Layered Cabbage Bake)","Varză à la Cluj",[198],[201,202],[324,325,326,81,205],[363],{"src":364,"alt":365},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Fvarza-a-la-cluj\u002Fhero.svg","Baked layered sauerkraut and minced pork casserole with browned sour cream topping in an earthenware dish",[367,368,369,324,181,370],"varza a 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