A Not-So-Secret Family Recipe #blogtemberchallenge

A family recipe (if grandma allows, of course!)

When we were still young, my mom taught my sisters and I to cook and made cooking dinner part of our chores. By the time I joined the youth group in high school, I was the one bringing savory dishes to potlucks while everyone else brought chips, sodas, and Little Ceasars Pizza. Cooking became a love language. A way to bless other people, and today I’m sharing with you one of the first recipes I learned: Sinigang (see-knee-gahng). It’s great for cold weathers.

Sinigang is a sour and savory Filipino stew. There’s not one right way to make it. Every family has a recipe of it that is pretty much similar to other families’ recipes. It is traditionally tamarind-based to get that sour taste, but you can also other sour fruits or commercial seasoning like this packet you can find in most Asian grocery stores:

You can see shrimp in the picture, but Sinigang can use pork, beef, chicken, shrimp, or fish. Pork is the most commonly used. I actually don’t like seafood Sinigang, and I hardly ever see chicken. The great thing about Sinigang is that it uses A LOT of vegetables. Come to think of it, you can make a vegetarian version. Toss in whatever meat and vegetables you like with the above packet and stew until everything’s cooked. But here’s what I do:

I must first apologize because I don’t write recipes well. This is one of those recipes I know by heart and change up depending on what’s fresh and available in the grocery store, as well as what vegetables I like. So, eyeball it. Leave out the ingredients you don’t like and add more of the ingredients you love.

Ingredients:

2-3 lbs of pork spareribs, trimmed and cubed (this can be bone-in or boneless)
1-2 packets of the Sinigang mix (it depends on how sour you like it. My family loves it super sour)
1 large bundle of yardlong beans or Chinese beans (we call it sitaw), cut in 1.5-inch pieces
1 large bundle of spinach
1 large/long Chinese eggplant, chopped
1 large head of brocolli, chopped
1 big tomato, quartered
3 pieces of taro root, quartered
1 medium onion, diced
1 green Serano pepper, whole
Salt and pepper to taste

Other vegetables you can use: baby bok choy, water spinach, okra, daikon radish, ginger

Instructions:

1. Boil the pork until cooked and almost tender (don’t take it too far or it will just fall apart. I happen to like it falling apart but my family doesn’t). I use a pressure cooker because this step takes the longest time. You can add salt and pepper or a teaspoon of the Sinigang mix to the pork while you boil it.
2. In a large pot of water, put everything (pork and vegetables) in except for the tomato and the spinach. Stew everything until the vegetables are cooked. The pork will get tender at this step. If you took it too far in Step 1, just set it aside, boil the vegetables on their own, and add the meat in the next step.
3. Turn off the heat and add the tomato and spinach. They will warm up in the heat of the dish.
4. Serve hot. We eat it with rice, no surprise there 🙂

And that’s it! If you make it, please let me know how it turned out and if you liked it. If you can’t find the seasoning packet, then use tamarind  or tamarind paste and a teaspoon of fish sauce to sour the soup base. Add it in Step 2. Enjoy!