Pork Rib and Vegetable Sinigang

A Recipe from Joseph Bernardo of Northridge

Hello, cooks and readers! The next few weeks are full of fall holidays, from Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to the Chinese Moon Festival, so I’ll be cooking up a wide variety of holiday treats. But first, we have a recipe from Joseph Bernardo (whose story I shared last week) that is one of my new favorite weekend cooking projects. It’s not particularly complicated or hard to make—you could make it on a weeknight if you have a little extra time—but it simmers away on the stove for about an hour, filling the house with wonderful smells. It also keeps well, so we can eat it throughout the week on nights when we get home late (and no one complains about the leftovers!) I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I do.

Pork Rib and Vegetable Sinigang

Sinigang is a classic Filipino soup that is, essentially, a one-pot meal (if you don’t count making some rice on the side). It’s got a good amount of tender meat in it, but it’s also full of lots and lots of vegetables. The broth takes on the flavor of the meat and the vegetables, of course, but its primary flavor come from sour tamarind. While traditional recipes use tamarind pods or paste, lots of home cooks (including Joe) now use packets of dried powder, which works well and is easier to find and use. (You can find these packets many Pan-Asian supermarkets or order them online.)

Sinigang is a very flexible dish and can be made with a variety of different cuts of meat and different vegetables. Joe’s favorite version—full of okra and Chinese water spinach—is kind of a perfect meal for this time of year when we still have summer produce but the evenings are getting colder. I followed his ingredient recommendations exactly, and I was thrilled with the result.

Serves 6–8

Vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
½ head of garlic, individual cloves peeled and minced
2-3 pounds of baby back ribs, cut cross-wise into 2”–3” pieces and separated (or an equal amount of pork belly or shoulder, cut into large pieces)
Salt and pepper
1 tomato, cut into wedges
2-3 tablespoons fish sauce (preferably Viet Huong brand)
1 packet of sinigang/tamarind mix (sinigang sa sampalok; such as Mama Sita's brand)
1 piece of daikon radish, peeled and cut into thick slices (or two pieces of taro, skinned and cubed)
12–15 pieces of okra
12 string beans, cut in 2-inch lengths
1 bunch (about 12 ounces) water spinach (kangkong), thick, tough ends cut off, stalks and leaves cut into long 6” lengths*
Cooked jasmine rice, for serving

*All of these vegetables vary depending on seasonal availability. Some recipes call for eggplant, bok choy, shishito peppers, napa cabbage, spinach, and/or mustard greens. The vegetables above are Joe’s favorites.

1. Add some oil to a large pot—enough to cover the bottom with a thin slick—and heat it over medium. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until it’s beginning to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for about a minute.

2. Turn the heat to high and add the ribs to the pot, seasoning them with a pinch of salt and a bit of pepper. Brown the meat, turning it, until it is golden on most sides. (The timing will depend on how crowded the pot is.)

3. Add the tomato to the pot, give it a stir or two, then add enough water to the pot so that there’s about 1 inch of liquid above the top of the meat.

4. Bring the liquid to boil, then turn the heat to medium-low. Stir in one or two tablespoons of fish sauce (depending on how salty your brand is), then stir in the packet of sinigang mix.

5. Partially cover the pot and simmer everything until the meat is fork tender, about 40 minutes.

6. Add the daikon (or taro) and simmer it for 8 (or 10) minutes. Add the okra and the string beans and simmer them for another 8 minutes. Add the water spinach to the pot, give everything a stir, then turn off the heat and cover the pot so that the water spinach cooks gently in the remaining heat until the thickest parts of the stems are tender enough to eat.

7. Serve the sinigang hot, with rice. (Joe likes to mix the rice into the soup.)

Ingredients for Joe’s favorite version of sinigang

From the Archives

If you’re preparing for Rosh Hashanah (or just looking for as many ways as possible to enjoy apples during this season) check out my favorite breakfast treat, a German apple pancake I’ve been making for my family every fall ever since I met my husband, over 20 years ago.

Photos: Georgia Freedman