Humba (braised pork belly)
Click here for a better recipe for humba and how to serve it as cua pao.
Ingredients :
1 kilo of uncut pork belly
4 tbsps. of vinegar
6 tbsps. of dark brown sugar
1 whole garlic
1 whole onion
1 laurel leaf
20 peppercorns
a bunch of dried oregano (available in the spice section of supermarkets and vegetable stalls in wet markets)
2 heaping tbsps. of undrained tausi (canned tausi is available in supermarkets)
meat broth or water
chopped cilantro for garnish (optional, but recommended)
Cooking procedure :
Lay the pork belly on a chopping board. With a sharp knife, make incisions about half an inch deep on the rind, running the entire width of the pork belly about half an inch apart. Place the pork belly on a baking dish, skin side up, and grill in a very hot oven (200oC) for about 30 to 40 minutes or until the rind is very well browned, puffed and crisp.
Place the pork belly in a cooking pan. Pour enough broth (or water) to reach about 3/4 of its height. Add the whole garlic, whole onion, peppercorns, tausi, oregano, vinegar, sugar and laurel leaf. Cover tightly and simmer for an hour to an hour and a half. Add more broth or water if the liquid dries up before the pork is thoroughly cooked.
Transfer the pork to a chopping board and cut through the incisions. Arrange on a serving platter. Strain the sauce and pour over the pork. Garnish with chopped cilantro.
Serve hot.
[tags]pork+recipe, meat+recipe, filipino+recipe, cooking, food, recipe[/tags]
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[...] could have easily call this dish humba or even hamonadong pata but certain ingredients are missing such as bean curd, tausi (salted black [...]
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i just discovered this site thru pinoyexchange today. needless to say i’m all over the site! i’m just hopeless in the kitchen. my mom used to say you can’t learn by reading. that because all i do is read recipes, stories about recipes and oggle at pictures of food!
i remember humba as the ultimate “tira” from weddings back in the province. it gets yummier each day. i dont know if its the same humba though, because our version has pineapples with it!
your mom is right. cooking is a hands-on thing. but reading cookbooks and food articles, and watching cooking shows, are a start. after that, it’s all a matter of applying what you learned. no one’s hopeless in the kitchen, april.
am drooling
….. kasi sabi ng isa 2x a month lang daw baboy
mag luto kaya ako itago ko lang
Sha, know what… it tastes 10 times better after reheating. After dinner, there was very little sauce left, so the following day, I diced the pork then pan fried them in a tablespoon of oil and I packed them for the kids’ school lunch. Syempre, tinikman ko muna. Shucks, it was so much better! I’m not tempting you ha… hehehehe
Hi Connie,
Am a fan of your site and have hosted dinners using several of your recipes. They’ve proven to be hits. Of course I tell my friends that I get the recipes from your site.
Am hosting dinner this Saturday and planning to make Humba. What other dishes go with Humba? Am planning a selection of 3 mains.
Thanks!!
Omar
Hi Omar.
Hmmmm… since humba is highly seasoned and saucy, I suggest a light seafood dish like the steamed whole fish in olive oil and perhaps the mapo tofu.
Sounds yummy! Thank you very much!!!
You’re welcome, Omar. Hope your friends enjoy all of it.
This is a good recipe for that pot luck lunch I’m going to next month! (Along with that Java Rice too.)
But, again, I have to ask: If I’m going to cook 5 kilos of pork belly (that’s good for 20 pipol, right?), does it mean I have to put in 5 whole garlic, 5 whole onions, 5 laurel leaves, etc?
Thanks again!
Ummmm no not necessarily… you can do with 2 garlics and maybe 3 onions and only 2 laurel leaves. It really depends on 1) how the pork is cut 2) how much additional liquid you will use. The amount of liquid depends on the shape of your cooking pan (wide and shallow or tall and deep?). Maybe the better way to do it is to start with less rather than more.
Wow, thanks very much, Connie! My confidence in cooking is growing every day. Before, I really can’t decently boil an egg even if you put a gun on my head.
BTW, I hope you got over that nasty bug. Bummer in this kind of weather.
I’m fine now, Louie, thanks. And I’m happy you’re enjoying cooking.
tried this recipe using a crockpot last week. skipped the baking part, i don’t have an oven. but still, the result was still very delicious. i added some hard-boiled eggs. it is one of the best recipes that i have ever tried to cook. thanks connie
where the hell did you get the background of this recipe?
pork humba in not a traditional filipino recipe
its a chinese recipe that filipino got accustomed to
cooking boy, i got it from a helll of a cookbook by Nora Daza. Satisfied?
That’s one hell of an answer Connie! Quite funny
I cant stay away from your recipe, I check it everyday. I will try this recipe & yung oven roasted pata. Forget about the cholesterol, bihira naman kainin ganyan na pag kain eh (kunwari! hehehe)
dami kasing asar, janet, eh. mga feeling know-it-all.
Hello. i was searching for a site where i can learn how to cook filipino cuisine. it is because my friends and i are taking turns in cooking. i dont know anything about cooking since i am very dependent with mother when i was still in the philippines. now that im working abroad, must find way to learn how to cook. anyways, i will try to cook and by the way, this site will definitely help me. THANK YOU
hi connie, just want to ask, what is tausi? will i find it here in toronto? thanks
Im looking for an ingredient for making of chorizo, maybe this is the way and very helpfull that i can make an extra income.hope you send me..thankz
I stumbled across your site by accident and what a great accident it was. Thank you for not being madamot with your recipes… my son loves the baon I prepare for him. Needless to say, breakfast, lunch and dinner is always a feast! Cheers to you!
cocoy, salted black beans.
Abby, in my case, not being madamot allows me to earn.
if i don’t have tausi in my area what is the other alternatives? by the way, thanking u so much for your recipe really helps me now that I just got married and a new mom.
hi, nice recipe, very informative and delicious… humba is one of my favourites, but had to cook it only for special occasions because of the calories
anyway, i tasted a humba in which anise and banana blossoms was used instead of tausi and oregano… it was delicious! does anyone have a recipe of this, ‘coz i tried to replicate the dish but somehow it didn’t quite make it 
Ai, i believe there’s canned tausi in most groceries, or if not in a specialty store which sells chinese stuff, maybe you can find some
Hi Ms. Connie!
will fresh oregano work in this recipe?
thanks!
Raph, I’m sure it will. I think that dried oregano is specified in the traditional recipe only because Filipino cooking was never really big on spices and we’re more acquainted with the dried kind. Or, perhaps, it’s the heat. We’ve gotten used to dried spices because they can be stored longer than fresh ones.
Connie, im somewhat confused on broth making cuz it says that “head garlic” is that meas the whole garlic? s it peeled or unpeeled?thanks!!
Yes, a head of garlic means whole garlic. A segment is a clove. No need to peel because you’re going to discard it anyway after cooking.
just wondering, i dnt really know how to cook, like zero cooking ability. Whole garlic and whole onion, did u mean not to slice them just put the whole onion and garlic???
i couldnt find pork belly in my place, m in a small town in the U.s. ive asked some local stores like safe way, but they dont have it. I ended up buying porkchops coz it has fat on its rim. can i use that and i do use it, do i still need to grill it in the oven?
Yes, whole garlic and onion. You’re going to remove them before serving so you really just want the flavors to get into the meat and sauce.
You can cook humba in a pot, Van. I just opted to cook it in the oven to make the pork rind crisp.
Hello! Was wondering if this recipe can be made without tausi or if there’s a more affordable sub?
Thanks a lot!
kwtan, tausi in wet markets cost as little as five pesos.
hi..
im new visiting your site.. ehe.. may i get the recipe of hamonadong pata? please? ^^
hi Connie, i wanna try this tomorrow but then kelan yung baking part?
sorry di kasi ako marunong talaga… so i think bake first for how long then braise for how long din?
Kath, the entry has a page 2 and it’s all in there.
hi, connie!
i’m a fan of you. thanks for your site it’s really a help for me. i’ve learn a lot in your site. though i’m not yet cooking, i’m eager already to try and experiment to cook one of your recipe. but i have a problem, i want to try to cook humba, but i don’t have tausi to use. what would you think is the other option i can use? thank you. michelle learning………….
There’s really no substitute for tausi but they’re quite easy to find. In the wet markets, most vegetable stalls sells them for as little as P5. In the supermarket, you can get them in cans.
Hello.
I’m curious… Most humba recipes I’ve seen online or in cookbooks have soy sauce, but yours doesn’t. Is soy sauce really dispensable? If I cook humba without soy sauce, will I need to add salt?
Hope you can reply.
Thanks,
lia
Lia, a Westernized recipes substitute soy sauce for the salted black beans either because they are not aware of what it is or it is unavailable. That might explain why you see more soy sauce than black beans in humba recipes. Salted black beans are soya beans, super salty, and that’s why in most recipes, washing them prior to use is recommended. There really is no need to add salt if you use a sufficient amount of black beans.
Thank you, Connie.
By the way, have you tried cooking humba in a slow cooker? Would you recommend it?
Let me thank you, too, for the rest of this site which I’ve visited often enough for recipes. A few times, I’ve looked in my ref, thought of how I could an ingredient to a dish, searched your site, and -voila!- found a recipe just for what I had
An amateur cook like me living too far for my mom to be a phone call away is indeed grateful to have your site just a click away. — lia
Rosalia, after the browning in the oven part, yes, a slow cooker would be good.
Hi Ms. Connie
My mom (and the people in her family) cooks humba differently. I believe they put banana flowers and banana in it. Also, they prefer using the pig head for it. Very yummy. And very distinct taste. Have you tried something similar?
No, Raine. The only stewed meat dish with bananas that I know of is called estofado.
to van,
a friend of mine makes humba with ham hocks (fresh, not cured). it looks like a small pata. tausi not available in small town, PA, so she used toyo and the rest of Connie’s recipe. very, very good…