If your first association with the word “buche” is the Christmas log cake, I will disappoint you because this article is not about this beautiful holiday and tasty cake. Buche refers to pork stomach and is a base for several dishes.

With this difficult ingredient, you can create culinary masterpieces. If you are ready for a dose of interesting and mouth-watering information about buche, let’s go!

What Is Buche Meat?

Buche is a pork stomach or a part of it that has been cleaned and cooked. Buche is a base for several delicious dishes such as pork stomach salad, stew with pepper, and probably the most popular tacos de buche. 

Buche Meat Ultimate Guide: Taste, Texture, How It Is Used & Health Benefits

Originally buche is Spanish but now is widely popular in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Puerto Rico. Tacos de buche is not the only recipe with pork stomach; other dishes include buche stuffed with meat and stewed pork stomach with different vegetables.

You may wonder why you should eat pork stomach if you could eat juicy steak or delicious chicken thighs. But buche meat is not only exquisite but also very healthy since it is rich in fat-soluble minerals and vitamins.

Buche Meat Taste

Buche meat has a mild taste and usually absorbs the flavors of other ingredients. Since buche requires several steps of cleaning and processing, it is more tender than other parts of pork. If cooked correctly, it does not have strong flavors. 

Before cooking, buche meat has to be cleaned very thoroughly. Firstly, it is soaked in vinegar. Then, it is washed in corn flour. This double cleaning makes meat completely safe to eat.

Buche Meat Texture

Cooked buche meat is tender and a bit chewy. Its texture is less spongy than tripe, but at the same time, buche meat is fattier, which also can influence the texture. Raw buche is tough and rubbery.

In terms of texture, buche meat differs from other animals’ stomachs. Cow’s stomach is tough and chewy. Even after cooking for a while, the texture remains firm and chewy. Buche meat has a tender and delicate texture if prepared in the right way.

Raw buche meat is tough and rubbery, but during cooking, its toughness changes into tenderness. In the end, it is much closer to chicken than to pork.

How Is Buche Used? Best Buche Recipes

Buche meat is not the most popular product, especially among people from the USA and Europe. However, dishes like tacos de buche, stewed buche with vegetables, fried buche with pickled cabbage, and even a salad with pork stomach are delicious. Buche is popular in Mexican and Asia cuisine, so you can find it in traditional Mexican and Asian shops.

The most popular dish is tacos the buche. If you are not a fan of intestines, tacos are the best way to get acquainted with the meat.

There are several recipes for stewed buche served with vegetables or rice. Another interesting combination is stewed buche with pepper. The soft buche absorbs the flavors of onions, mushrooms, carrots, and pepper; and creates a tender and piquant taste. It goes great with bread and rice.

And we cannot disregard grilled buche, especially buche carne asada. For people not familiar with Mexican cuisine, it is spicy marinated grilled meat cut into slices.

Buche Tacos Recipe

The most popular buche dish is easy to cook at home. For that, you will need:

• 2 pork stomach;
• 6 tablespoons of vinegar;
• 1 onion;
• 4 garlic cloves;
• 1 tablespoon of dried oregano;
• 2 bay leaves;
• 2 ancho chiles;
• 3 tablespoons of soy sauce;
• salt;

For serving:

• corn tortillas,
• tomatillo sauce;
• salsa verde or salsa roja;
• diced onions and cilantro;
• sour cream;
• lime.

Directions: 

1. Rinse stomach in cold water, add 3 tablespoons of vinegar and wash buche in water and vinegar by scraping stomach walls against each other. Rinse and repeat one more time.
2. Put the washed stomach into boiling water and boil for 5 minutes. Then remove the meat and rinse under cold water again.
3. Let it cool for a bit then chop it and put it into a pot. And add other ingredients for simmering.
4. Simmer the mix for 3-4 hours until the stomach gets a tender texture. Don’t let all the water boil out; add more if needed. Meat should not be too salty, so add salt accordingly.
5. After the meat is ready, serve it with tortillas, chopped onions, cilantro, salsa, and sour cream. Before serving, drop some lime juice.

There are also several tips for making fantastic tacos. Remember that you can always experiment with toppings, do not limit yourself only to onions and cilantro. If you want to add some interesting notes, consider adding pineapples to tacos.

Buche Soup Recipe

Any soup with buche meat will be full of flavor and taste. Buche and vegetable will do their work together. Here you will find a simple buche soup with corn and pumpkin. It is perfect for the autumn mood.

 Ingredients: 

• 3 corn cobs;
• 1 kg buche meat;
• 1 onion;
• 1 clove of garlic;
• diced tomato;
• 1 carrot;
• 1 pepper;
• pumpkin cut into cubes;
• vegetable oil;
• cilantro;
• 1,5 teaspoons of salt;
• ½ teaspoon of pepper.

Directions:

Boil corn in the pot. After the corn is ready, separate the corn from the water. In the pan, fry the cleaned chopped buche and then add onion and garlic. Stir them together until the onion is translucent. Stir together other vegetables – tomato, pepper, and pumpkin. Then add vegetables to the meat and pour water from the corn into the pot.

After that, add corn and cilantro and cook until everything is ready. Right before everything is ready, take out the pumpkin, squash it and return to the pot. Season with salt and pepper. For serving, you can add boiled rice and avocado.

Buche Health Benefits

Buche has a list of health benefits, and its addition to the diet can be a huge advantage. Buche meat is a source of Vitamin B, iron, zinc, and copper. However, due to the fat content, the stomach can be high in calories and fats. Also, buche is low in protein, so it might not be the best meat for people watching their weight.

How to Store Buche?

Buche meat is stored in the refrigerator. Once cleaned, the whole buche (not cut) should be wrapped into cling wrap and a freezer-safe bag and then placed in the refrigerator. It stays fresh for up to one month. 

There are several important rules to storing buche meat:

1. Do not cut meat into pieces. It might ruin the texture of the meat.
2. Wrap meat very carefully into cling wrap and freezer-safe bag;
3. Buche meat easily gets spoiled, so be careful with stored meat;
4. Cooked buche meat can be stored in the fridge for up to a week.

How to Prepare Buche?

Buche meat can be a masterpiece or a complete failure. Since it is an inner organ of an animal stomach contains bacteria or even pathogens that are potentially dangerous for humans. Therefore, the most important part of cooking meat is the cleaning and sterilizing it in vinegar or salt. So, there are several steps of buche preparation:

1. The stomach exterior is gently cleaned with vinegar or salt. Salt is a great product not only to kill bacteria but also to remove specific stomach odors.
2. The interior is also cleaned with salt. Just fold the interior out and massage salt through the meat’s surface. Let the stomach soak in salt for 15 min and then rinse it with water. If you spot fat, you can remove it with a knife.
3. Then wash the meat in corn flour. It helps to reduce the smell. 2-3 times would be necessary to remove all the odor from the inside.
4. And finally, scald the stomach. Make sure that meat is not inside out and scald buche in a wok over high heat for around 5 min. You will see the brown liquid inside. After the meat is cooled down, you can discard the liquid. Check if you see any sliminess inside the stomach. If you do, scald the meat for another 2-3 min.

Conclusion

Animal insides may not be the most attractive part of the meat, but they can be equally tasty or even tastier than usual meat. Buche is the proof of that. Buche meat prepared in the right way can become your favorite food and a signature dish. Try out our recipe above and impress your friends.

Buche FAQ

Is Buche a Throat?

Buche is an animal stomach lining and usually refers to pork stomach. It should be distinguished from beef tripe. Chicken Buchi, a popular Filipino dish, is prepared using chicken throats.

Is Buche Meat Healthy?

Buche meat is a healthy and safe option if cooked properly. The specificity of the stomach is that it processes food and contains bacteria and pathogens. So to be safe, it should be cleaned and cooked properly. Also, it is a great source of Vitamin B, zinc, iron, and other nutrients.

Is Beef Tripe Similar to Buche?

Although tripe and buche are similar, they are not the same. They are both types of meat from the stomach lining; however, tripe comes from a cow and buche – from a pig. The preparation and cooking methods are indeed similar, and they both require cooking over low heat for a long time.