I made skinless pork longganisa from scratch! Ordinarily my parents would just buy it from our local Filipino grocery store if we wanted to have some for breakfast. But I wanted to make it from scratch so that I could control the salt content and I didn’t really want to eat casing.
If you don’t know what pork longganisa is, it’s a Filipino sausage that is both sweet and a bit sour. My favorite longganisas are made with tons of garlic! So if you are into garlic, this is the sausage for you. When you cook longganisa, it oozes out a fatty, sweet sauce that you can also put on top of your longganisa or rice. You can also save it for later to add flavor to a fried rice–the possibilities are endless.
If you are ever in the Philippines or happen upon a Filipino restaurant for breakfast or brunch you probably won’t see longganisa on the menu. Instead you’ll see it listed as longsilog, which is longganisa, garlic fried rice, and eggs (usually fried). Why is it called longsilog? It’s actually a combination of the foods on the plate: long for longganisa, si is for sinangag (garlic fried rice), and log is for itlog (egg). It’s how you eat breakfast in the Philippines and it will keep you quite full until lunch time.
Don’t let this recipe overwhelm you. For this particular recipe I did a 2:1 ratio of meat to fat. However, if you want to reduce the amount of fat go for a 3:1 ratio. I actually have a meat grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer, but if you don’t have one and don’t want to buy one (they are pretty pricey) you can ask your butcher to grind the meat for you; just make sure to ask them to coarsely grind the meat. Another important tip is to not over mix your meat because it will become mealy.
I hope you all enjoy the longganisa!
P.S. You don’t have to have longganisa for breakfast; no one says you can’t have it for lunch or dinner either. 🙂
Skinless Pork Longganisa
A sweet and sour garlicy breakfast sausage.
Ingredients
- 1 lb. pork butt, cut in chunks
- ½ lb. pork fat, cut in chunks
- ¼ cup light brown sugar
- 3 tbs. sugar cane vinegar
- 1 tbs. soy sauce
- 1 tbs. annatto powder
- 2 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
- 1 head roasted garlic or 1 head of garlic
- 1½ tbs. corn starch
- 1 tbs. oil
- ~¼ cup water
Directions
- Step 1 Place pork butt and pork fat chunks in freezer for 2-3 hours.
- Step 2 In a small bowl, mix sugar, annatto powder, and black pepper.
- Step 3 In another small bowl, mix vinegar and soy sauce. Taste this mixture to see if you want more soy sauce and/or vinegar.
- Step 4 Take pork out of freezer and massage wet ingredients into pork.
- Step 5 Then take the dry ingredients and massage in.
- Step 6 Place chunks into meat grinder and catch ground meat in a new clean bowl, making sure to save the marinade.
- Step 7 Take remaining marinade and add corn starch. Mix until corn starch make slurry.
- Step 8 Add marinade into ground meat and gently mix until absorbed by meat, making sure not to over knead.
- Step 9 (Optional)Take a small piece of ground meat to form into patty and fry in a medium low pan with a dash of oil. When cooked through, taste meat and add ingredients if you feel it is lacking anything, making sure to gently mix additional ingredients.
- Step 10 Place ground meat in an air tight container in fridge overnight or at least 3 hours.
- Step 11 Take ground meat and roll into sausage links.
- Step 12 Place sausage links in freezer for 10 minutes to make sure they don’t fall apart when cooking.
- Step 13 Fry sausage links in a pan on medium-low heat with oil, making sure to sear all sides.
- Step 14 Add water, making sure water just covers surface of pan.
- Step 15 Place lid over pan and cook for another 2-5 minutes, until sausages reach an internal temperature of 160°F.
- Step 16 Serve with garlic fried rice, eggs, and atchara.
