TAKEO – You are in Takeo province and it is lunchtime. But you may not be able to afford the expensive beef steak or grilled freshwater lobsters caught from the river.

Don’t worry. You can still enjoy your lunch with rice, served with the famous cow's gut sour soup, for just $1.50, near Phnom Chiso Mountain, about 60km south of Phnom Penh.

Called samlor machou puos ko, cow gut sour soup, is a preferred lunch for many travelers who pass by Phnom Chiso Mountain in the province.

“Some customers come to eat here, and some people who are lazy at cooking just come to buy some of my cow gut sour soup and take it home,” said Eng Sreyneth, a 31-year-old seller who rented a small shop by the roadside.

She said she had been involved in the business for five years after her mother retired.

“My mother had prepared and sold cow gut sour soup here for more than 30 years before she handed over the business to me,” she said. 

With this low-profile business, Sreyneth said her mother had been able to feed and raise four children until they grew up and got married like her.

“I got married two years ago to a man who had been my most loyal customer but we don’t have any children yet,” she said.

Sreyneth said she bought between seven and ten kilograms of cow guts every day to cook and sell.

“Because I work alone, I cannot buy much more cow guts to cook,” she said. Owners of some 20 other small shops would work in pairs or with more people.

As Sreyneth talked about her recipe, a husband and wife came on a motorcycle with a baby to her shop.

“Please come in and have lunch here,” she called out. “My cow gut sour soup is well known here.” 

As the couple began to eat with the baby sitting on her mother’s lap, an SUV pulled over.

“Give me two packs of soup $2.50 each,” the driver shouted.

Sreyneth said most of her customers were Cambodian, except a few foreign tourists who dropped by for lunch after visiting a nearby temple.

Many cultures in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas incorporate cow intestines and other offal from cows into their cuisine.  

Nov Vey, a 62-year-old father of four, said he had eaten cow gut sour soup at Phnom Chiso Mountain for about 30 years.

“Today, I am having a late lunch because I thought I wanted to have cow gut sour soup here on my way to Takeo town,” he said, adding that the best cow gut sour soup was the one cooked with big ant eggs.

“But I could not buy ant eggs today,” replied Sreyneth. “Otherwise, I would use them instead of ripe tamarind to make the soup more delicious.”

Nhel Chamroeun, 53, who has many years of experience in cooking cow gut sour soup, agreed that different cooks and provinces use various ingredients in its preparation.  

He said that some people used ice or pineapple slices to tenderize the tough cow guts when cooking.

“My mother and other people in the old days would put a porcelain plate in the soup when they cooked tough meat like cow guts,” Chamroeun said. “I don’t know why they did that, but it worked.” 

Although cow guts are inexpensive, they offer many benefits, including providing a good source of protein and as a rich source of collagen.