My brother-in-law Z shared his wife’s pork sinigang recipe with me, but because I’m never happy when I don’t tweak anything—including precious family recipes handed down from generation to generation—I twiddled with it a bit and came up with a truly signature dish. ;)
What’s Pork Sinigang?
For those who want to surprise their Filipino friends and loved ones, sinigang is a meat stew (pork or chicken) with a sour flavor, usually with tamarind, guava, calamansi (calamundi), young mango or any sour tropical fruit as flavor base.The meat is stewed over low fire, with enough water to cover it, until it’s tender and the fat has been rendered. And you don’t use plain water but the water from rice washings, so part of my routine when cooking pork sinigang is cooking the rice as well.
IMHO, the perfect pork sinigang is a confluence of many things—a thick, starchy soup with the fat from the meat coating the top; crunchy but cooked vegetables; just the right balance of sour and spicy flavors; and juicy, tender meat with its fibers still attached to the bone.
