one filipino dish a week

Ever since I made the striped bass a couple of weeks ago I’ve really been wanting to grill. I want that summer outdoor feel. I know it’s in the middle of winter here but I can fantasize about a nice beach afternoon. So I called up the parents to tell them to get the grill ready because I was on my way home for the weekend. So here was my chance to make the grilled fish that I wanted to make on a real grill and make some of pork bbq.

Filipino pork barbecue is delicious meat on a stick. There’s just something about meat on a stick that makes it so good. Pork bbq is well known as great street food in the Philippines and is pretty ubiquitous in the cities. The secret to pork bbq is the marinade. The marinade can make it or break it. The pork bbq that you can get from the street vendors has a sweet sauce marinade. I don’t know what it really is but it’s pretty damn good. Another characteristic of the street vendor pork bbq is the slices of meat are very very thin and you get a lot of fat (most likely to keep food cost down). This is great when eaten with atsara and puso (rice wrapped in coconut leaves aka hanging rice).

For this event (yes, it is a momentous event), I used this for a marinade: soy sauce, brown suga, rice wine, minced garlic, and finely chopped onion. In the past I’ve used ketchup or sprite to sweeten up but I feel like it makes it too sweet. Marinating for a long time is another key factor to great pork bbq (at least 6 hours). So I mixed the marinade and pork and put it in a nice big ziploc bag and refrigerated overnight. I used pork butt for the bbq because is looked like it had a nice meat to fat ratio. I’m not really sure what would be the best cut of the pork to do pork bbq with.

The next day I went over to my parent’s house and fired up the grill (charcoal for best smoke flavor). Too bad they didn’t have the wood charcoal so I settled with the briquettes. Once it’s all the meat is skewered up and the grill is hot it’s time to char some meat :). It shouldn’t take long for the skewers to cook. Only about 3-4 minutes on each side. It was fairly cold (mid 20s F) and slightly windy when I was grilling and it definitely affected how the food cooked. I didn’t anticipate that.

In the end the bbq came out great! We ate it with the atsara that I made then some rice and it was almost as if it was a nice day at the beach (minus the puso). Up next the seafood.