Sinigang
In Filipino cooking sourness matters as much as saltiness or sweetness, and sinigang is its purest expression. The soup should be sharply, almost aggressively sour — enough to make your mouth pucker. The acid comes from tamarind, and its job is not only flavour: it cuts the fat of the pork and is what lets you eat bowls of a fairly rich soup.
Your own work in that: 0 min.
- Simmering the pork 60 min
- Tamarind 10 min
- Vegetables 20 min
- Greens 5 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneSimmer the ribs for an hour, unsalted
Cover the ribs with cold water, bring to a boil, skim and simmer for an hour with the onion and tomatoes. Do not salt at this stage — the fish sauce goes in later and the broth will still reduce, so it is easy to oversalt.
Ingredients: 1000 g pork ribs · 1 pcs onion · 3 pcs tomatoes · 2000 ml water · 3 tbsp fish sauce
Press the tamarind through a sieve
Cover the block of tamarind with boiling water, mash it with a fork and push it through a sieve, pressing with a spoon. The fibres and stones stay behind. The liquid is cloudy and very sour — that is the base of this soup's flavour.
Ingredients: 100 g tamarind · 300 ml boiling water
Fibres and stones in the sieve, cloudy acid in the bowl.Add the acid and season with fish sauce
Pour the strained tamarind into the broth and add the fish sauce. Taste: it should be clearly too sour. The vegetables about to go in release water and soften the flavour somewhat — it is normal for the seasoning to seem excessive at this point.
Ingredients: 1000 g pork ribs · 1 pcs onion · 3 pcs tomatoes · 2000 ml water · 3 tbsp fish sauce
Add vegetables in order of firmness
Add the daikon and cook 10 minutes, then the aubergine and whole chillies for 6 minutes, finally the beans for 4 minutes. Each vegetable has its own timing, and added together you would get collapsed aubergine beside hard daikon.
Ingredients: 300 g daikon · 2 pcs aubergines · 200 g green beans · 2 pcs chillies · 200 g spinach
Each vegetable in turn, firmest first.Add the greens and turn off the heat
Add the spinach, push it under the surface and turn the heat off immediately. The leaves wilt in the residual heat within seconds. Cooked longer they darken and turn slimy.
Ingredients: 300 g daikon · 2 pcs aubergines · 200 g green beans · 2 pcs chillies · 200 g spinach
Pushed under the surface, heat switched off.Serve with rice and check the sourness
Taste one last time and add more tamarind if the acid has faded. Serve with a bowl of white rice — in the Philippines sinigang is always eaten with rice, which softens its sourness and saltiness.
Ingredients: 300 g daikon · 2 pcs aubergines · 200 g green beans · 2 pcs chillies · 200 g spinach
Before you start
Sinigang mix sachets
Filipino sinigang sa sampalok sachets are an entirely normal solution, used in the Philippines too. Follow the packet — usually one sachet to about two litres. Fresh tamarind gives a deeper, fruitier acidity, but the difference is smaller than you might expect.
Other sources of acid
Sinigang is also made with guava (sinigang sa bayabas — sweeter and milder), green mango, or calamansi. Same soup; only the character of the acid changes.
Not only pork
Prawns (sinigang na hipon) cook in 4 minutes and give a light, summery version. Salmon, salmon heads or beef all work — the meat sets the cooking time and the rest of the recipe stays the same.
