Dinuguan

Pork in a dark blood sauce, with the vinegar in before the blood so it never curdles.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce, pork.

Ingredients

• 700 g pork belly, in 2 cm dice
• 200 g pork offal, in 2 cm dice
• 500 ml pig's blood, strained
• 120 ml vinegar
• 1 onion, chopped
• 8 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 6 long green chillies
• 300 ml water
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Method

1. VINEGAR BEFORE THE BLOOD, and this is the step the whole dish turns on. Acid in the pot first keeps the blood smooth as it thickens. Blood into a pot with no acid in it seizes into grains in seconds and nothing brings it back.
2. Strain the blood through a sieve before you start, pressing any clots through with the back of a spoon. Clots stay clots.
3. Fry the onion and garlic in the oil, 3 minutes. Pork belly in, 8 minutes, until the fat has rendered and the edges have browned.
4. Offal in, 3 minutes. Fish sauce over it.
5. Vinegar in and now LEAVE IT ALONE for 3 minutes without stirring, at a boil. Stirred while it is still raw, the vinegar tastes of vinegar all the way to the table.
6. Water in. Simmer covered 45 minutes, until the pork is tender enough to cut with a spoon.
7. Heat right down to the lowest it goes. Pour the blood in in a thin stream, stirring the whole time in one direction. It goes from red to brown to near black and thickens as it does.
8. 20 minutes at a bare shiver, stirring every couple of minutes and scraping the bottom. Allowed to boil it goes grainy; left unstirred it catches and the catch tastes burnt.
9. Whole chillies in for the last 5 minutes. Pepper. It should be thick enough to sit on rice without running off 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