Pork Ribs Sour Soup with Tamarind

Sinigang na Buto ng Baboy sa Sampalok

Rain or Shine this dish does not disappoint. I remember my papa would tell me that “a good soup should make you sweat”. He would make some sinigang and as soon as he takes off the heat we would eat it straight away and I love putting so much soup “sabaw” into my bowl that my rice would be swimming in it. Haha!

Now I make for my family, they love it when I make sinigang and they also put a lot of soup with their rice and make it swim too! Haha! I don’t know how you like your sinigang but I like mine sour with lots of vegetables. I literally dribbling while typing this haha!

Sinigang is one of those dishes that are truly Filipino. There are many dishes that the Filipinos adopted and inherited from our colonisers and neighboring countries but we have a some dishes that are ours. Sinigang is one of those dishes, this is why they its put next to Adobo as Philippines national dish. There is no official dish at the moment as it’s always a hot topic of discussion. Though I don’t think its a bad thing to have 2 national dishes, I for one would vote for both because I can’t choose just 1 dish, I love them both.

Living in the London has it’s perks but finding Filipino ingredients has gotten better. When I started cooking for my supper club there are very few ingredients available for me to use, so I started using alternatives ingredients. Which if fine because Filipino cuisine is so diverse that some ingredients can be swapped for something similar.

There are many variations to Sinigang and there many souring fruits we can use. Some region use a particular fruit because it’s abundant in that area and some all use all sorts of souring fruits. From ‘kamiya’ or bilimbi, ‘sampalok’ or tamarind, ‘bayabas unripe guava to ‘santol’ or cotton fruit. If in doubt use sugar cane vinegar. That should make it sour.

You can make Sinigang with pork, fish or shellfish. For some reason I haven’t seen a chicken sinigang?? Which is interesting, maybe chicken doesn’t go nicely as sour? I love making Pork Sinigang and in this recipe I used pork ribs, I bought them from Chinatown and I didn’t realise until after that the one I bought are the ribs with soft cartlidge which was a bonus as I love chewing on them too! Win win! hahaha