Braised Pork Belly Recipe (Filipino Humba)
May 23rd, 2009 | Filipino Recipes | 23 Comments
Greetings! I am currently in Beijing and will be in Asia for a few weeks, including a brief side trip back to Penang. I will try to blog and share my experiences with you, but today, let’s welcome guest blogger Franco from the Philippines at Table for Three, Please. Franco and his wife recently joined my family’s culinary tour in Penang and enjoyed it. You can read their experiences here. Table for Three is a wonderful blog that offers a visual glimpse of Filipino cuisine (which many people wish to learn more) with well-articulated posts and a down-to-earth voice, which I admire and adore. Franco made braised pork belly or “Humba” for us. Dig in and enjoy!
Braised Pork Belly (Filipino Humba)
Guest Writer: Table for Three, Please
Good food always travels.
Humba is an interesting dish. This slow braised pork belly is coated in a sweet glaze of panocha or palm sugar and given depth of flavor with the addition of soy sauce, salted black beans, and star anise. Although this dish finds its local roots in the Eastern provinces of Samar and Leyte, just by casually perusing the ingredients listed below, it is clear that this “local” dish has origins beyond our own shores.
If you are willing to search further, it would seem that most Asian culinary cultures have a version of this dish of braised pork belly, sweetened by sugar and balanced by a savory counterpoint of soy sauce, rice wine or even fish sauce. The Chinese flavor their Dongpo Pork with Shaoxing wine. The Vietnamese mix eggs with their Thit Heo Kho Trung. The Japanese savor their Buta No Kakuni with hint of sake. The list goes on…(get braised pork belly recipe after the jump)
Even within every Filipino household, the preparation of this simple Humba varies greatly. Besides the usual addition and subtraction of ingredients, some recipes recommend the use of pig trotters instead of the more common pork belly. Adding to complexity of this dish, other recipes even suggest adding mushrooms, banana blossoms, rice wine, hard-boiled eggs and even potatoes into the mix. I choose to keep things relatively simple–cooking a tried-and-true family recipe.
Serves four generously
Ingredients:
5 cups water or enough water to cover the pork belly
3 lbs pork belly, trimmed of thicker layers of fat
6 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
¾ cup white vinegar
¼ cup soy sauce
1 cup palm sugar
2 tbsp salted back beans
1 tsp ground black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
2 star anise
¼ cup peanuts, roasted with skins off
Method:
In a stockpot, place the water and pork belly. Bring the water to a rolling boil, leaving the pork to par-boil for at least 10 minutes. Take the pot off the heat and leave the belly in the water until cool. Remove the pork from the pot and place in the freezer to quickly chill. Reserve the boiling liquid or broth and place it in a refrigerator for later use.
In large mixing bowl, combine all the other ingredients. Mix well until the palm sugar has completely dissolved. This mixture will serve as both marinade and braising liquid.
Once the pork belly has achieved a comfortably sliceable consistency, remove it from the freezer and cut the belly into three-inch squares. Place pork cubes in the marinade and keep in refrigerator overnight.
An hour or two before braising, remove both the marinating pork belly and the reserved broth. Scrape off the layer of fat that has formed above the broth.
In a heavy pot, place the pork belly, the marinade and broth over high heat. Once at a boil, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and let it cook for at least two to three hours or until tender. Watch the fatty layer of the belly. If it begins to jiggle as it braises, the pork is tender and is ready to serve. You can also use a more conventional technique which is to poke the pork with a fork.
Once the pork is tender, remove the braised belly and set aside. Discard the bay leaves, turn up the heat under the braising liquid and reduce it to a slightly viscose-like sauce.
Cook’s Notes:
Like most braised meat, Humba makes great leftovers. Store the braised pork with the sauce in an airtight container in the freezer. To reheat, transfer to a heatproof serving dish and steam until warm through.
Serving this dish can be as simple as placing the braised pork in a bowl and pouring the reduced sauce over it–with bowls of steaming hot rice on hand. Or you could do it my way. I divide the pork belly into bite-size pieces, carefully pour the sauce (including the peanuts and black beans) over thin slices of pork and serve it with a side of ensalandang mangga or a simple chopped salad of mangoes, tomatoes and white onion–sharp sour flavors to contrast with the sweet fatty pork.
We may not be able to claim this dish as singularly our own. But our version, Humba, speaks to things that Pinoys love: our enjoyment of rich, vibrant and contrasting flavors, our obsession with all that is pork and our deep-seated passion for food that reminds us of home.
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I love braised pork belly, especially the dark dark kind with a lot of sauces. So yummy and rich. I love eating it with rice.
I agree that every country has its own braised pork belly, what is not to love about sweet and savoury fatty pork?
Mmm, pork belly. FYI, the links to the Table for Three blog took me to a site full of commercials. This site seems to be the one: http://www.tableforthreeplease.com/
Hi, how do you compare this to adobo? Which one tastes better? It seems like the basic ingredients are the same, but I might be wrong. I’ve never had any Filipino food and am anxious to try.
Mmm — braised pork belly… my mouth is watering right now!
Have fun traveling around Asia – I’m so jealous and wish I could go back and just eat my way around the continent.
I love braised pork belly. In fact, I just had one last night–Taiwanese braised pork belly. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the use of bamboo shoots that overpower it. Yours look simple and delish, the way it’s supposed to be.
I would love to eat this more, but my wife doesn’t eat pork…but at least I can gawk at your fatty pork belly and drool. Hahahaha…
Hello My Taste Heaven. There really is no better way to enjoy this dish than with a hot, steaming bowl of rice. Yum. :)
Hi Craft Passion. What’s not to love? Not much. Unless you dislike taste of sweet-salty pork that just seems to melt in your mouth. Starting to drool.
Thanks for the link. Ninette. :)
Hey Anon. Hmmm. That’s a tough question. Let me say first, that every province, every town and every household has a variation of both Adobo and Humba. So really comparing the two is…difficult. Yes, they are similar but because of the addition of other ingredients, the character of the final dishes change significantly. For me, it really depends. There are day when I love the salty-sour of Adobo (I prefer chicken) and there are days I crave for nice big serving of Humba.
Hi Stacy. I agree. Excuse me. I need to eat a piece of bread or something.
Thanks Eating 365. Never had the Taiwanese version before. Still sounds worth the try despite the bamboo shoots. :)
Hello NYMY. Funny enough. My wife, right now, doesn’t like anything stewed or braised. So when it comes to dishes like Humba, I’m pretty much cooking for myself. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. :)
Great post! I love humba and I’m so glad you shared your delicious sounding recipe! That has got to be one of the most sophisticated looking humbas I’ve seen around :)
Hmmm… I can only fantasize, don’t think I’m allowed to eat that!
Drool…..
:)
I want! I want!
Hi Anonymous!
Humba is more similar to Dongpo pork: it has a subtly sweet undertone. Adobo is more intense: cooked right, Adobo really has the strong scent of garlic and pepper.
If you like pungent/garlicky dishes, then Adobo is better :p
Sarap! My gosh, that really looks good. I’d like to try it but hubby and sons aren’t into fatty pork. Maybe I’ll prepare these when friends come over!
Haha, that’s what friends are for :)
OMG, This is just the recipe I’ve been looking for! I love Adobo but when I tasted Humba, it really blew me away. I just couldn’t get the recipe right. The star anise makes all the difference. Thank you for sharing this recipe!
I love how the dish looks. It looks so sophisticated. I have had this before but it didn’t look as saucy or as tender and appealing as the one on your photo. It tasted just okay. Your post makes me want to try it out again.
Can someone tell me how sweet this dish is? I am not a huge fan of sweet things. I really do want to try it so I need to know. Would it be fine modified without so much sugar? Thanks!
thank you for posting this recipe…i’m pretty sure that my friends in dubai would be glad if send this to them…more power!
Hi!
I am so delighted to see this great filipino dish put on your page. I am half visayan (southern filipino) and I have asked many many other filipino’s and they have no idea what humba is! It is wonderful dish, I would almost say it is better than adobo.
Thanks for putting humba on your page as it is a great representation of delicious filipino food :D
it is a sophisticated looking humba eh? hehehe
franco is right, there’s so many version’s of humba/adobo so it really is hard to compare both. i have tasted my aunt’s adobo that has a lot of chile and yet its not that spicy at all. then my friends mom cooks her adobo really dry yet when you go take a bite of that meat. you’ll be surprised how tasty and flavorfull it is. humba in the other hand, as you can see, its not really advisable for the one’s that has a heart problem or you’ll have a heart attack with pleasure XD
humba is more into the salty side, the beans add contrast to it’s taste. the only difference i think is you can cook adobo with chicken or pork (or both at same time which i have seen a few times).
Humba got introduced to me by a friend from Camarines Norte(a province in the Philippines) and god… the dish made me eat a lot of rice, its just perfect =P
Rasa Malaysia or Franco:
When i cook humba, i usually fry (either deep or skillet fry)first the cut pieces of pork belly inorder to get rid of at least half of the liquid fats of each of the pieces of meat, before doing the rest of the procedure……just my way of preparing humba…….but i’ve tried your recipe, so yummy too!……thanks for posting food filipino.
I love how this recipe is prepared. Delicious!
oh i love this, reminds me of my college life.i never liked adodo much and my husband don’t care either.being grown up makes you watch what you eat, but for a treat this is really awesome.