Pork Tocino (Sweet Cured Pork - Filipino dish)

Pork Tocino (Sweet Cured Pork - Filipino dish) - made August 16, 2019 from Panlasang Pinoy

My absolute favorite Filipino breakfast is tocilog. You already know the -ilog part of the meal from my previous post on Beef Tapa. The "toc" part is short for tocino, a sweet cured pork dish, traditional in Filipino cuisine. I love tocino. Just love it.

My mom used to make it when I was a kid and I always loved the sweet flavor of the pork and the crisp yet tender yet chewy texture of same. It's often colored red from annatto powder or achuete as I've known it from my mom's kitchen. I didn't have any so I used red food coloring instead. It might be off-putting to use red food coloring in something that isn't red velvet and pork to boot so if you don't want to, you can exclude it but then you won't get authentic looking tocino. The red color is a trademark of tocino.

You'll notice the brown sugar and the pineapple juice ensures this isn't exactly low carb. I love tocino so much, I don't care so much about that :). This is supposed to "cure" in the refrigerator for 2-3 days. I made it on a Friday afternoon and cooked the first few slices on Sunday morning so it marinated/cured for probably 36 hours rather than 2 full days.

It looked like tocino in terms of color and how it browned and caramelized thanks to the sugar in the marinade. However, it didn't quite have the same sticky sweet flavor of tocino. It's possible I should've let it marinate an extra day so I'm going to try again tomorrow. I also used pork loin which typically has less fat so there wasn't as much fat to crisp up which is part of the appeal of tocino. In fact, in some Filipino restaurants, they serve tocino with too much fat. This one had too little. I also kept tasting the salty more than the sweet. I think next time I would cut back on the full tablespoon of salt. Still, this was pretty good. The pork was tender and had good flavor. It just needs more coating or sauce from the way I made it.

1/2 kilo pork shoulder, sliced into 1/4" thick slices
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon red food coloring or annatto powder
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 cup pineapple juice, optional (I used it)
1 tablespoon salt

1. Combine brown sugar, food coloring, soy sauce, garlic, pineapple juice and salt in a mixing bowl.
2. Put the sliced pork in the bowl and rub the mixture liberally on all sides of the pork.
3. Place pork and mixture in a ziploc bag and refrigerate for 2 to 3 days.
4. After curing the pork, fry in 2-4 tablespoons of oil until cooked through and edges are crisp. Do not overcook.
5. Serve with fried egg and garlic fried rice.