Sisig

Name: Sisig
Total time: 2 h
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Kapampangan
Ingredients: 700 g Pork jowl (maskara) or pork belly; 2 Pig ears; 1 large Onion, finely diced; 5 tbsp Calamansi or lime juice; 4 Bird's eye chillies, chopped; 100 g Chicken liver, boiled and mashed; 2 tbsp Soy sauce; 3 Bay leaves; 1 tbsp Black peppercorns; 2 tsp Salt; 1 Egg; 20 g Butter

Pork jowl and ear boiled, grilled, then chopped fine and served spitting hot on a cast-iron plate with calamansi, onion and chilli — Pampanga's answer to what to do with the parts nobody wanted.

Source

Recipe by Filipino home kitchens · 🏺 Traditional · Cooking that turns on three levers — vinegar, salt from fish or shrimp, and fat — and a table where sour, salty and rich are balanced by the eater, not the cook.

Pampanga · Angeles City — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms it as a Filipino dish made from pork jowl and ears seasoned with calamansi, onions and chilli, originating in the Pampanga region. Quantities, the boil-then-grill instruction and the liver-not-mayonnaise note are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

Watch it being made · 3 videos

Minang’s Kitchen Kusinela Foxy Folksy

⏱ 120 min🍽 4 servings🔥 540 kcal🇵🇭 Philippines🌶️🌶️

Gluten-freeDairy-freeNut-free

Steps

Boil the jowl and ears with the bay leaves, peppercorns and salt for 45 minutes, until a knife goes in easily.
Drain, pat dry and grill over coals or under a hot grill until the edges char, about 10 minutes a side.
💡 Boil, THEN grill. Grilling raw leaves the cartilage tough, and boiling alone gives you no smoke at all — sisig needs both steps and neither is optional.
Chop everything into small dice — 5 mm, no bigger. This is knife work, not a food processor job.
Fry the onion in the butter, add the chopped meat and the mashed liver, and fry until it starts to crisp.
Season with the soy sauce, calamansi and chillies. Taste — it should be sharply sour before it hits the plate.
Heat a cast-iron plate until smoking, tip the sisig on, crack the egg over the top and bring it to the table still spitting.

💡 Tips

From Angeles City in Pampanga, and Filipinos will tell you the version outside Pampanga is not the real thing. The sizzling plate is a 1970s addition, not ancient.
Eaten as pulutan — food ordered because people are drinking, not because they are hungry.
The egg is stirred through the moment it hits the plate, cooking in the residual heat. Do not cook it beforehand.