My Homemade Pork Tocino

Baon for school!
Tocino, also known as burong babi, is a traditional Filipino dish of sweet cured pork. It's often made with pork belly, but in my case, I used pork butt, which had much less fat. It is best known as a breakfast dish and is usually served with rice and eggs.

Tocino is one of the popular Filipino pork productst. To produce juicy and palatable tocino, one should use meat from the loin (lomo). Other meat sources with some portion can be used for tocino like ham (pigue) or the shoulder (kasim), however, the tocino will not be as juicy and palatable.

The process of making tocino involves marinating the meat in a mixture of sugar and seasonings. It’s then left to marinate for at least twelve hours. In fact, you can leave it to marinate for 1 to 3 days! You may have noticed that the pork is very red in colour. Back in the day, annatto seeds were added to deepen the red colour and leave a peppery flavour. But many recipes now will call for red food colouring instead.

After the curing process, the pork is cooked in a wok or skillet over medium heat. This gives tocino its characteristic chewiness, drawing out the fat from within the meat, and allowing the brown sugar to give the meat its shiny caramelized coating. There are many variations, such as adding minced garlic, or even using pineapple juice instead of water during cooking.

INGREDIENTS NEEDED FOR THIS RECIPE:

1.Pork Butt or Pork Shoulder – You will need one pound of pork sliced about 1/8th of an inch thick. Remember to slice across the grain!
2.Brown Sugar – You can use white granulated sugar as well, but brown sugar has more flavour and adds more caramelization to the finished pork.
3.Salt and Ground Black Pepper
4.Garlic Powder – Be sure to use garlic powder and not granulated garlic, which is much stronger. You can substitute the garlic powder with one or two cloves of minced fresh garlic if you wish.
5.Red Food Colouring – This is what gives the pork that beautiful red colour. You can skip it, but traditionally, tocino is very red!
6.Water
7.Vegetable oil/ coconut oil

HOW I MAKE MY PORK TOCINO:
Place the thinly sliced pork into a mixing bowl. Measure in the brown sugar, salt, ground black pepper, and garlic powder, and add a couple of drops of liquid red food colouring.

With a gloved hand or tongs, gently massage the pork until the sugar and seasonings are well distributed. The red food colouring may not distribute too well but don’t worry about that. The colour will very easily distribute during cooking.

Transfer the pork mixture to a resealable bag. Remove as much air from the bag as possible and refrigerate the pork for a minimum of 12 hours.

When you are ready to cook the pork, transfer the marinated pork to a skillet or wok. Pour in half a cup of water and turn the heat to medium-high. Stir the pork well and bring the mixture to a boil. Once boiling, lower the heat to simmer and cook until the water is absorbed.

Increase heat to medium-high and add two tablespoons of vegetable oil. Fry, stirring often, until the pork has caramelized slightly. Be careful not to burn the pork! This should only take 2-3 minutes.

USE PORK BUTT OR PORK SHOULDER:
Pork butt and pork shoulder are both cuts that come from the shoulder. Both are relatively inexpensive cuts that lend themselves to low-and-slow cooking such as barbecuing, braising, stewing, etc. They are also perfect for cooking in appliances such as a slow cooker or an Instant Pot.

Pork butt comes from the thicker section of the shoulder and may include the shoulder blade and upper leg. It’s a semi-tough cut of pork that contains a lot of connective tissue and marbling. It is most often purchased with the fat cap attached. Sometimes, this cut is called Boston butt as well.

The pork shoulder, which can also be labelled as picnic shoulder, comes from the thinner, triangle-shaped end of the shoulder, just above the front leg. It has less marbling and fat than pork butt. Pork shoulder is often sold with the skin on and a layer of fat.

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