BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — Alfredo Marron does plumbing for a living, but one of his favorite hobbies is to get his family together and make menudo. He is also taking those cooking skills to enter his fifteenth year in the Menudo and Pozole Cook-Off.
“It started off as an advertisement, but around the second, third year, I realized it’s more like a family gathering. It's a way to kind of like a family reunion,” said Alfredo Marron.
Marron's family also helped him learn how to make his menudo, which stems from his wife and his mother's menudo, and his own style as well. Marron says it is a trio of styles blended into his menudo, but he will not disclose all the details of his secret recipe.
“Sometimes you get tucked by your mom and then you get tucked by your wife, and I want this and I want that, so and then I got my own recipe, so just so I won’t offend anybody I put a little of my mom’s recipe, and then I put my wife’s recipe in it then I put mine that way we came out with a blended recipe and it’s worked for us I think it’s a good recipe,” said Marron.
And if you never had menudo before some of the basic ingredients you will find in it are.
“It's either pig feet or beef feet, and that is what basically gives it the flavor. Then you put your tripe, a lot of people use honeycomb which is probably the best cuts of the menudo, and for competition that’s the best cut,” said Marron.
Marron says it is also all about the menudo’s color, texture, and smell in competition, and good menudo should taste good without any additional ingredients.
Marron acknowledged that the competition at the kickoff is always tough to beat because the menudo made is the best of the best.
“There’s a lot of good menudo. Good menudo, if you get good menudo it’s hard to tell it apart, so the next thing you have to go by okay it’s hard to distinguish which menudo is better, so the next thing you go by is texture okay they have the same texture, so the next thing you go by is smell, and if you can master all that you have a good possibility of winning the competition,” said Marron.
Although he has never won the competition, Marron says it is not about winning. As his mom battles some health issues he says it is all about representing his mom in the competition.
“I just want to make her proud,” said Marron.
