Like The Tomato
Nothing here but my musings about daily life, books, anime, and food.
Sinigang is a popular Filipino stew or soup characterized by its sour and savory taste. Tamarind is the most commonly used sour base but you can of course use other agents. Some people use miso, guava, unripe mango, and lemon or kalamansi. You get the idea. You can use different meat as well – pork, fish, shrimp, beef. And it’s served with rice of course.
With the increasingly chilly weather, I decided to cook this dish. Well, it was more like Chris requested and I complied. This was not the first time I cooked this dish. Far from it, this dish was one of my staples and I often prided myself with the fact that I could cook this dish in my sleep. But this would only be the second time I would cook this with fish, my go to will always be pork.
The Ingredients: Fresh salmon, taro root, okra, Chinese eggplant, string beans, yellow onion, Roma tomatoes, baby bokchoy, tamarind soup mix, and Serrano peppers.
Prep: I diced the onions, quartered the tomatoes, quartered the taro, cut the eggplant – nothing fancy really, cut the string beans, and separated the bokchoy. I just washed the salmon since we had the market cut and clean it for us when we got it.
I decided to precook the veggies except for the bokchoy and the peppers. I learned from my previous attempt in cooking sinigang with fish that it definitely cooks faster than any meat. We loved our veggies on the softer side so I want them cooked already before I even start cooking the fish. I let veggies simmer in salt water. Once the taro was almost on the soft side, I covered the pot, took it off the heat and set it aside. I left the veggies in the hot water though, I wanted them to continue cooking.
In a huge stock pot, I warmed up a little bit of olive oil and sweated the onions. When the whole kitchen was filled with the fragrant aroma of onions, I put the tomatoes in the pot, sauteing it for a few seconds. I then put the salmon in the pot after that. I filled the pot with filtered water – just enough to cover the fish, I added a bit of salt and let it simmer for about 15 minutes.
With that, I added the cooked veggies, the peppers, and poured 3 1/2 packets of the tamarind soup mix just because we prefer our sinigang extra sour. I let that simmer for about 10 minutes and then added the bokchoy. Let that simmer for another 5 minutes. I turned the heat off and covered the pot, letting it sit for about 15 minutes before serving.
There are different ways to serve this. Filipinos tend to serve this a la carte – in a huge serving bowl – next to huge bowl of rice to share with the family. Chris and I enjoy ours in a huge ramen bowl on a bed of rice with a small bowl of patis or fish sauce on the side. Perfect.
Dinuguan is a Filipino stew made of pork meat cooked in pork blood and vinegar. This very popular dish is often eaten with the well beloved white puto (steamed cake made with rice flour) or white rice.
We live outside of Seattle and for some reason, Filipino restaurants here are rare and scarce. To say that we have been craving for this dish is a huge understatement. My fiancee’s dad makes a mean dinuguan and we miss it. So what is the solution? I want to try and give cooking this dish a try.
Disclaimer: Before I continue on, it would be best to disclose that there will be no measurements on this post. I don’t believe in them. I read the instructions but never followed the quantity that they use on recipes. All things I use, i.e. vinegar, salt, pepper, are all eyeball estimates and often adjusted to my own taste buds’ satisfaction.
Though traditionally made with pork offal, I decided to cook this dish with pork thigh and pork belly. Yes. I would like this to be fatty so I chose cuts that have a little bit more fat in them. The recipe is surprisingly simple, the only misgiving that I had was cooking with blood. Never handled it in the kitchen before so I was very apprehensive.
I used 1 diced yellow sweet onion, minced garlic, 3 slices of pork bellies, 1 pork thigh, 3 chilies, vinegar, 1 beef broth carton, bay leaves, 2 containers of pork blood, and then salt and pepper to taste.
The first step I did was thaw the blood. And while that was in progress, I decided to marinate the pork meat with just a little bit of fish sauce. I was very careful not to put so much fish sauce, I just wanted the meat coated with it.
Using a stew pot, I sauteed the onion in a little bit of olive oil. I don’t like caramelized onions when cooking stew, I just “sweat” it. Once I feel like that the onion had sweat enough, I added the minced garlic. When I see that the onion had reached a certain transparency to it, I added the pork meat being very careful not to pour off whatever little fish sauce I used for marinating. I took my time sauteeing the pork meat, I made sure that all the slices were brown and at least appeared to be cooked externally.
The next step was tenderizing of the pork meat. I poured a whole carton of beef broth into the pot. Water is definitely an option but I just like using broth for any stews that I make, it just gives the dish a little bit more flavor. This was also the step where in I poured vinegar to the mix – if I could put a quantity on it, maybe about 1 cup. I also added maybe four or five bay leaves onto the mix. I stirred the contents of the pot, slightly covered it with the lid and left it for about an hour or longer depending on how soft I wanted the meat to be. I did check from time to time using my trusty fork to make sure that the pork meat was at the right tenderness.
Then the pork blood went in the mix. I was stirring the stew maybe every 3 minutes just to ensure that the blood didn’t coagulate. I also added the chilies at this stage. I didn’t taste the dish yet however. I just stirred, rest, stirred again for approximately 30 minutes. They said the blood should be cooked in about 15 minutes after you put it in the dish but I wanted to play it safe and did 30 minutes before I started adjusting the taste.
The taste adjustment taste should be pretty simple but this was the most crucial for me. I wanted the dish to taste acceptable and to not make it obvious that this was my first time cooking dinuguan. I added salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then tasted it. Not enough, I added a little bit more salt and pepper. Not vinegary enough, I added a splash of vinegar. I did this in little increments until I have the desired taste.
Once I was happy with the taste, I took the pot out of the heat and just let it sit for a while. You can serve it right away with rice, I just like it when the dish sits on the counter for a little bit to let the flavors combine more and do its magic.
I prefer my meals with rice, so I decided to serve dinuguan in a bowl on top of white rice. I had it last night for dinner and I had it again for breakfast this morning – the stew was even better in the morning or the next day! My fiancee loved it too so that was a win for me.
Will I cook this again? For sure, it was so easy to make with very minimal ingredients. The ingredients were also not difficult to buy. Asian markets or in our case the grocery store next to our apartment pretty much sells everything. A little deviation from this though is that I want to try it with ginger for sure. I heard a lot of good things to adding ginger to this dish.
Cravings satisfied for sure.