Cooking Lesson #8: How to Cook the Filipino Dish "Nilagang Baboy or Pork Stew"

"Cooking Lesson #8: How to Cook the Filipino Dish "Nilagang Baboy or Pork Stew"

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Hello my friends and welcome again to another episode of my cooking blog series where I cook my favorite foods through my own cooking style. Today, I would like to share to you my own version of Nilagang Baboy or Pork Stew.

So basically, we had a cold weather today due to the Tropical Storm Basyang and so I decided to cook Pork Stew which is perfect for such weather.

What is Nilagang Baboy or Pork Stew?

The Tagalog word nilaga literally means boiled or simmered. Thus the dish’s name already explains what the dish is. According to Wikipedia, the dish was influenced by Spanish during the Spanish Colonial Period in the Philippines which lasted for more than 300 years.

In fact, the dish was also called as kosido or cocido in Spanish, which is a traditional stew eaten as a main dish in Spain, Portugal, Brazil and other Hispanophone and Lusophone countries. However, the Filipino way of cooking pork stew doesn’t include sautéing of meat prior to simmering.

Although there are versions where the meat is sautéed first, the most common way of cooking this dish is by simply or directly simmering the meat until it softens. Vegetables are then added after and cabbage is the most common vegetable to be added in this famous dish.

What are the Ingredients?

Ingredients for this dish vary from place to place as there are different versions of it all over the country. Usually, beef meat or pork meat is used as the main ingredient of this dish and in my version, I used pork meat. There are also versions where carabao meat is used.

Moreover, I prefer pork ribs as it is ideal for soup-based dishes. I think we all know this so I won’t explain it further. By the way, I bought all these sliced pork ribs for only 78.00 pesos or roughly 1.50 USD, cheap right?

Then of course we need spices and vegetables. As what I always say in my previous cooking lessons, you can always have your own version and you can always experiment in cooking. Thus ingredients vary with respect to your own version and item choices.

But if you want to follow my own style, you’ll need cabbage, lemon grass, bell pepper, ginger, onions, spring onions then chili pepper if you want to add a bit of spiciness. There is actually garlic there but you won’t need it. I just bought it so that I have an extra whenever I’ll need it.

The Procedure

First thing to do is to boil or simmer our pork meat for 20 to 30 minutes or until our meat is soft. You can always check the meat if you want. Take note that we need to boil our pork meat at low fire to be able to really achieve perfect softness of our meat.

Also, I prefer to simmer the meat with little amount of water and again I think this is self-explanatory and also this is to concentrate the flavor of the meat.

While we simmer our pork meat and while waiting for it to softens, we will slice our spices accordingly. The ingredients that need to be sliced are ginger, onions, spring onions and bell pepper. You can also slice the cabbage if you want. Well, these are actually obvious and I shouldn’t be telling you this hahaha!

As soon as our meat becomes soft, we then add our chili and sliced ingredients, the ginger and the onions only. By the way, I’ve already added the lemon grass as I started simmering the pork meat. This is to add aroma to our mixture. Then wait for another 5 minutes or until the mixture boils again.

Then as soon as the mixture boils again, add the remaining ingredients such as the sliced cabbage, sliced bell peppers and the spring onions. Then wait for another 5 to 10 minutes or until the mixture boils again.

If you want the cabbage to be half cooked then don't wait for another 5 minutes. Just turn off the stove and that dish is ready to be served! By the way, don't forget to add salt and other secret spices hahaha!

Here is our ready to eat Nilagang Baboy by your chef next door, @asbonclz! Hehehehe! Thank you for taking the time to read my post!

CLICK HERE FOR THE PREVIOUS COOKING LESSON: SINIGANG NA BABOY

_{All photos are mine}