Batchoy

A long pork bone broth over egg noodles, finished with crushed pork crackling.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce, pork, shrimp paste.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg pork bones, with marrow
• 400 g pork shoulder
• 300 g pork liver, kidney and heart
• 600 g fresh miki egg noodles
• 2 tablespoons shrimp paste
• 1 onion and 8 garlic cloves
• 3 litres water
• 100 g chicharon, crushed
• 6 spring onions, chopped
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• fried garlic, to finish

Method

1. Boil the bones and shoulder in the water with the onion for 3 HOURS, skimming. The broth is the dish and there is no shortcut — a one-hour stock gives a thin soup that the toppings cannot rescue.
2. Add the shrimp paste to the broth after an hour.
3. SIMMER THE OFFAL SEPARATELY, 20 minutes, then slice it thinly. Cooked in the main pot it clouds the broth and turns it grey.
4. Strain the broth, lift the shoulder out and slice it, and season with fish sauce.
5. Blanch the miki noodles for 30 SECONDS ONLY and divide them between bowls. Fresh egg noodles are nearly cooked already and a minute turns them to mush under hot broth.
6. Lay the sliced pork and offal over and pour the boiling broth in.
7. CRUSH THE CHICHARON OVER AT THE TABLE, not before. It is pork crackling and it is there for the crunch — put in the kitchen it has gone soft by the time the bowl arrives. Fried garlic and spring onion with it.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes