Crazy Rich Filipino Food. It’s Diniguan (pork blood stew) with crispy pork belly

Dennis Clemente
Sep 7, 2018 · 2 min read

Ligaya Mishan of The New York Times knows how to lay it on thick — only because she’s talking about the Filipino pork blood stew, diniguan.

Sample this prose: “First, slabs of pork belly are fried until they’re half crackle, half wobble. Then they’re dropped in a black lagoon of pork blood simmered with vinegar and long green peppers like witches’ fingers.

“At Lahi in Elmhurst, Queens, this is called crispy dinuguan, a marriage of two Filipino dishes: dinuguan (pork-blood stew), in which the meat is traditionally braised and submerged in dark gravy, and lechon kawali, pork belly gilded from the fryer, skin primed to shatter.

“Filipino parents sometimes try to pass off dinuguan as “chocolate meat,” to coax — con, really — their children into eating it. Here, it’s served without the usual innards (lung, intestine, heart) and the blood is gently cooked down until it’s more coat of paint than sauce, its metallic tang subdued.”

For comparison with other countries, it is said to be similar to Tiết canh of Vietnam, European-style blood sausage, or British and Irish black pudding in a saucy stew form. In appearance and preparation, look to the Polish soup Czernina or an even more ancient Spartan dish known as melas zomos (black soup) whose primary ingredients were pork, vinegar and blood.

Are you crazy enough to eat this?

Click below to read the piece from The New York Times last June.

To find Filipino restaurants near you, click on sarap.life, a Yelp-like Filipino food search platform.

Sarap.life

A supplementary publication of the Filipino food search platform, Sarap.life

Dennis Clemente

Written by

Sarap.life

A supplementary publication of the Filipino food search platform, Sarap.life

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