Pork Asado Filipino Recipe

Let’s cook pork asado! It’s a salty, sweet dish that quite resemble the pares and humba Filipino dishes. If you’re a Filipino, siopao or salapao may easily come to mind with pork asado; however, mine is a stand-alone dish eaten with steamed rice rather than a bun.
 
There are 2 Chinese ingredients in pork asado that is similar with pares. These are 5 spice powder and star anise. And because it is sweetened, I also recall humba when eating my pork asado. As if not yet lacking with further originality, cooking pork asado has similarity with another Filipino dish – the pork adobo. Just like the latter, it is marinated in soy sauce and garlic, among others.

Here’s the end product of my pork asado dish. 

It does look a lot like pork adobo, doesn’t it? I need to work on my plating (I know!); but I assure you, the pork asado flavours are definitely there. So, if you trust what I know about cooking pork asado, read on.
 
Ingredients in cooking pork asado:-    Pork, 400g
-    Soy sauce, ½ cup
-    Garlic, crushed and minced
-    Water or pork broth when available, 1-2 cups
-    Star anise, 1 pc
-    Dried bay leaves, 3-5 pcs-    5 spice powder, 1 tsp

-    Sugar, ½ cup (adjust if you want it to be sweeter)
 
Directions in cooking:1.    Marinate the pork in soy sauce, garlic and 5 spice powder.

2.    Cover and leave it overnight or at least an hour so that flavours stays with the meat.

Because of the time needed to marinade, this dish is best planned. Say, do the marinade tonight and cook it lunch- or dinnertime. Still, you can cook pork asado without marinating the meat overnight. An hour on the marinade would do. In my experience however, the longer the pork stays with the marinade, the bigger the flavours are.

3.    When ready to cook, put the marinated pork mixture in a deep pan and add in the water or the pork broth.
 

As for the pork broth, you can make your own by simply boiling pork in garlic, onions and water seasoned with salt and pepper. No need to do this, though as water would suffice for step #3. It just so happened that I had pork broth sitting in the fridge when I cooked my pork asado. Lucky me! The broth would add bigger flavours into the dish.

4.    Let the mixture boil under low heat.
5.    Avoid opening the lid; just let it cook for 30 minutes.
6.    Add the bay leaves, star anise and sugar.

I used 3 pcs of palm sugar for this dish. You can use raw sugar or brown sugar. Use what you have at home. If I were to cook siopao pork asado, I would definitely add more sugar into this dish. But since I am eating the asado with rice, I had to control the sweets to make it a more savoury meal.

7.    Continue slow-cooking for an additional 20 minutes.
8.    Turn off the heat. Let it rest.
9.    Serve with hot rice.

 
The pork asado that I cooked was heavenly. It was oh! so tender and the fats were as soft as marshmallows. It was like eating buttery sweet and salty pork. Yum!
 
I hope you give this one a try. It’s an easy dish to follow. You just really need the time to let it cook slowly.