Bicol Express

Name: Bicol Express
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Bicolano
Ingredients: 600 g Pork belly, in strips; 500 ml Coconut milk; 150 ml Coconut cream; 12 Long green chillies (siling haba), sliced; 5 Bird's eye chillies; 3 tbsp Shrimp paste (bagoong alamang); 6 Garlic cloves, minced; 1 Onion, sliced; 20 g Fresh ginger, julienned; 2 tbsp Cooking oil

Pork simmered in coconut milk with shrimp paste and a genuinely alarming quantity of long green chillies — the hottest thing in Filipino cooking, and the one dish the country admits is spicy.

Pinagmulan

Recipe ni Bicolano kitchens · 🏺 Traditional · The Bicol region cooks with more coconut milk and far more chilli than the rest of the country — the one Filipino cuisine outsiders call hot.

Bicol · sinilihan — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms it as a Filipino dish known natively in Bikol as sinilihan, popularised in Malate, Manila but made traditionally in the Bicol region. Quantities and the fry-the-bagoong instruction are this book's own.

Karagdagang impormasyon sa Wikipedia ↗

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Walang glutenWalang gatas

Mga hakbang

Fry the garlic, onion and ginger in the oil until soft, about 5 minutes.
Add the pork and brown it on all sides.
Stir in the shrimp paste and fry 2 minutes until it smells sweet rather than raw.
💡 Fry the bagoong properly. Straight from the jar it is aggressively fishy, and two minutes in hot oil turns that into savoury depth.
Pour in the coconut milk and simmer uncovered for 25 minutes, until the pork is tender and the sauce has reduced by a third.
Add both chillies and the coconut cream. Simmer 8 minutes more — no longer, or the chillies go grey and lose their bite.
Taste for salt — the bagoong usually makes more unnecessary. Serve with plenty of white rice.

💡 Mga tip

Named after the Bicol Express train from Manila, not the region alone — the dish and the railway share a joke about how fast it moves through you.
It gets hotter overnight as the chilli oils move into the coconut milk. Cook it the day before at your own risk.
Rice is not a side here, it is the fire extinguisher. Do not serve it short.