Know your pork and how to cook it
When you’re preparing a pork dish, it’s important to choose the right cut of meat to go with it. Robina Farms Premium Fresh Meat offers a variety of meat cuts to suit your needs. But with so many different cuts available, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. To help you choose the right cut of meat for your recipe, here’s a handy guide with a few suggestions to get creative with your pork dish.
Kasim. One of the most common and ver- satile cuts of pork, kasim has layers of fat and litid, making it ideal for slow cooking and suited for most pork dishes like adobo, menudo, and sinigang.
Recipe recs: Get creative with your pork shoulder by roasting it whole on low heat for an extended period of time. With layers of fat keeping it moist, cooking it low and slow allows the flavors to seep in, resulting in the perfect roast for pulled pork.
Tenderloin. From the same area as pork loin, the tenderloin is the most tender of all cuts of pork meat. It also has the mildest flavor because of how lean it is, and benefits from lots of seasoning. It’s best cooked and treated like steak — grilled or pan-fried.
Recipe Recs: Make an alternative to chicken fingers by breading and frying tenderloin strips and pairing it with honey-mustard dip, or use it as a substitute for beef in a garlicky salpicao.
Ribs. The row of bones surrounding the loin, the ribs are located closer to the belly, while those closer to the backbone are the more tender baby back ribs. Ribs are very flavorful on their own, and are best enhanced by charred flavors when they are barbecued.
Recipe Recs: Put a unique spin on barbecued ribs by adding coffee grounds into the dry rub.
Liempo. A definite crowd-pleaser, liempo, or pork belly, is the fattiest and most flavorful cut with alternating layers of meat and fat. It can be used interchangeably with kasim for a more flavorful and fatty pork dish.
Recipe Recs: Level up the classic liempo by rolling a whole pork belly into a log and filling it with aromatics to make the Italian roast pork dish porchetta. This distributes the flavors more evenly throughout the meat, and creates a juicy roast with uniform layers of fat and crispy skin.
Pigue. The pigue, where we get the ham, is the second most versatile pork cut. It can be used in any of the same dishes as its leaner brother, kasim, and is also best for slow cooking.
Recipe Recs: Put a spin on your basic adobo by adding gata and allowing it to cook down to a thick sauce.
Pata. The underrated pata can be used for a wide variety of dishes that otherwise require general-purpose cuts. While not fatty, it gets tons of flavor from the layers of skin and litid surrounding it. It is commonly used for crispy pata and the braised pata tim.
Recipe recs: Pata slices can easily substitute cubed meat in pork nilaga or sinigang. When it is deboned and chopped, it can also replace the hard-to-find maskara for sisig.
To find the right cuts of the highest quality meat, look for Robina Farms Premium Fresh Meat at any Robinsons Supermarket branch nationwide.