Stew Marvelous for Words : Menudo cook-off: Contestants show off their flair--and differing interpretations--in making a traditional Mexican dish.

There was menudo northern Mexican style with hominy and even a new-wave menudo light.

But all 20 cooks who toiled over steaming pots of the tripe stew for a team of judges at College Park in Oxnard on Sunday agreed that the ultimate menudo was worth no less than six hours of waiting.

“I started at about 6:30 in the morning and now it’s about done,” Maria Isabel Hernandez said just before 1 p.m.

The daylong test to whip up the best batch of menudo--that well-simmered batch of stew made out of the stomach lining of cows or pigs--was a chance for cooks to show off their flair at creating one of the most traditional Mexican dishes.

The contest also raised money for the Boys & Girls Club, organizer Pat McCarthy said.

Postponed once because the organizers couldn’t find enough contestants, the menudo fest drew an estimated 500 people, some of them cooks from out of town.

Hernandez, a native of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, said she believes that her region’s menudo is the best.

“I like it more, maybe because I was raised with it,” she said.

The basic menudo includes chiles, garlic and oregano in addition to tripe. Many of the cooks said they borrowed their recipes from mothers and grandmothers, using “secret ingredients” they refused to reveal.

Roy Sanchez, 37, a therapist from Fresno, referred to his batch as “new-wave menudo” with less fat and more taste. His secret ingredient was a whole onion and a whole lemon that are taken out just before serving.

“A lot of menudo cooks don’t make menudo right, they make it greasy,” Sanchez said. “When it’s clean, it makes it a lot tastier.”

Sanchez spends hours finding the right kind of tripe, a honeycombed type called “casitas” that thickens the sauce the longer it is boiled. The whole process of cooking menudo takes about 10 hours, he said.

“It’s therapeutic,” he said. “It’s something I like to do.”

The winner of the $1,000 first prize was Oxnard resident Anna Urbina. The $500 second-place prize went to Bardo Garcia of Oxnard and the $300 third-place award to Rachel Jimenez of Santa Paula. The winners were chosen by a team of eight judges who evaluated taste, texture, aroma and color of the heady stew.

Some cooks recommended their stews to drinkers hoping to overcome hangovers and adventurous foodies looking for another gastronomical thrill.

Menudo neophytes Paul Seeger, 27, of Ventura and Micky Gamron, 26, of Ojai spent a few minutes inhaling the aroma from a line of different stands before deciding to jump in.

“That stuff will put hair on your chest,” cook Rosa Clark warned them as they were handed two cups of menudo.

The couple said they wanted to savor the exotic fare, despite initial reservations about eating something as unsavory as tripe.

“I like Mexican food. I’m hoping I can get some recipes out of this,” Seeger said. Gamron said Seeger had convinced her to come.

“I’m a wimp. I’ve heard some horror stories about it,” she said, wrinkling her nose. Despite their fears, the two smiled after taking their first bites and eagerly took several more.

“It tastes real good. It melts in your mouth,” Seeger said.