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Humba (braised pork belly)
A classic Filipino pork dish, the traditional way of cooking humba is to slowly simmer a whole slab of pork belly in a mixture of tausi (salted black beans), vinegar, dark brown sugar, garlic, onions, peppercorns and oregano. The more elegant way of cooking humba is to grill the pork belly first until the rind is all crisp and puffy and then braise it in the usual mixture of herbs and spices. The cooked humba acquires the texture of pata tim–the rind is chewy and the meat is very, very tender.
Humba was today’s lunch. A very late lunch, actually, because we had breakfast at around 11.00 a.m. I didn’t start cooking lunch until around 1.00 p.m. and we finally ate at around 3.00.
A lot of people stay away from pork belly, or liempo in Filipino parlance, because of the amount of fat in it. Good quality pork belly is not that fatty. The slab of pork belly I cooked today had about 1/8″ of fat between the rind and the skin and most of that melted off when I grilled the meat in the oven. So, just choose your pork belly well and you won’t have to worry too much about ingesting all that fat.
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Comments
33 Responses to “Humba (braised pork belly)”
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i just discovered this site thru pinoyexchange today. needless to say i’m all over the site! i’m just hopeless in the kitchen. my mom used to say you can’t learn by reading. that because all i do is read recipes, stories about recipes and oggle at pictures of food!
i remember humba as the ultimate “tira” from weddings back in the province. it gets yummier each day. i dont know if its the same humba though, because our version has pineapples with it!
your mom is right. cooking is a hands-on thing. but reading cookbooks and food articles, and watching cooking shows, are a start. after that, it’s all a matter of applying what you learned. no one’s hopeless in the kitchen, april.
am drooling
….. kasi sabi ng isa 2x a month lang daw baboy
mag luto kaya ako itago ko lang
Sha, know what… it tastes 10 times better after reheating. After dinner, there was very little sauce left, so the following day, I diced the pork then pan fried them in a tablespoon of oil and I packed them for the kids’ school lunch. Syempre, tinikman ko muna. Shucks, it was so much better! I’m not tempting you ha… hehehehe
Hi Connie,
Am a fan of your site and have hosted dinners using several of your recipes. They’ve proven to be hits. Of course I tell my friends that I get the recipes from your site.
Am hosting dinner this Saturday and planning to make Humba. What other dishes go with Humba? Am planning a selection of 3 mains.
Thanks!!
Omar
Hi Omar.
Hmmmm… since humba is highly seasoned and saucy, I suggest a light seafood dish like the steamed whole fish in olive oil and perhaps the mapo tofu.
Sounds yummy! Thank you very much!!!
You’re welcome, Omar. Hope your friends enjoy all of it.
This is a good recipe for that pot luck lunch I’m going to next month! (Along with that Java Rice too.)
But, again, I have to ask: If I’m going to cook 5 kilos of pork belly (that’s good for 20 pipol, right?), does it mean I have to put in 5 whole garlic, 5 whole onions, 5 laurel leaves, etc?
Thanks again!
Ummmm no not necessarily… you can do with 2 garlics and maybe 3 onions and only 2 laurel leaves. It really depends on 1) how the pork is cut 2) how much additional liquid you will use. The amount of liquid depends on the shape of your cooking pan (wide and shallow or tall and deep?). Maybe the better way to do it is to start with less rather than more.
Wow, thanks very much, Connie! My confidence in cooking is growing every day. Before, I really can’t decently boil an egg even if you put a gun on my head.
BTW, I hope you got over that nasty bug. Bummer in this kind of weather.
I’m fine now, Louie, thanks. And I’m happy you’re enjoying cooking.
tried this recipe using a crockpot last week. skipped the baking part, i don’t have an oven. but still, the result was still very delicious. i added some hard-boiled eggs. it is one of the best recipes that i have ever tried to cook. thanks connie
:):):)
where the hell did you get the background of this recipe?
pork humba in not a traditional filipino recipe
its a chinese recipe that filipino got accustomed to
cooking boy, i got it from a helll of a cookbook by Nora Daza. Satisfied?
That’s one hell of an answer Connie! Quite funny
I cant stay away from your recipe, I check it everyday. I will try this recipe & yung oven roasted pata. Forget about the cholesterol, bihira naman kainin ganyan na pag kain eh (kunwari! hehehe)
dami kasing asar, janet, eh. mga feeling know-it-all.
[...] could have easily call this dish humba or even hamonadong pata but certain ingredients are missing such as bean curd, tausi (salted black [...]
Hello. i was searching for a site where i can learn how to cook filipino cuisine. it is because my friends and i are taking turns in cooking. i dont know anything about cooking since i am very dependent with mother when i was still in the philippines. now that im working abroad, must find way to learn how to cook. anyways, i will try to cook and by the way, this site will definitely help me. THANK YOU
hi connie, just want to ask, what is tausi? will i find it here in toronto? thanks
Im looking for an ingredient for making of chorizo, maybe this is the way and very helpfull that i can make an extra income.hope you send me..thankz
I stumbled across your site by accident and what a great accident it was. Thank you for not being madamot with your recipes… my son loves the baon I prepare for him. Needless to say, breakfast, lunch and dinner is always a feast! Cheers to you!
cocoy, salted black beans.
Abby, in my case, not being madamot allows me to earn.
if i don’t have tausi in my area what is the other alternatives? by the way, thanking u so much for your recipe really helps me now that I just got married and a new mom.
hi, nice recipe, very informative and delicious… humba is one of my favourites, but had to cook it only for special occasions because of the calories
anyway, i tasted a humba in which anise and banana blossoms was used instead of tausi and oregano… it was delicious! does anyone have a recipe of this, ‘coz i tried to replicate the dish but somehow it didn’t quite make it 
Ai, i believe there’s canned tausi in most groceries, or if not in a specialty store which sells chinese stuff, maybe you can find some
Hi Ms. Connie!
will fresh oregano work in this recipe?
thanks!
Raph, I’m sure it will. I think that dried oregano is specified in the traditional recipe only because Filipino cooking was never really big on spices and we’re more acquainted with the dried kind. Or, perhaps, it’s the heat. We’ve gotten used to dried spices because they can be stored longer than fresh ones.
Connie, im somewhat confused on broth making cuz it says that “head garlic” is that meas the whole garlic? s it peeled or unpeeled?thanks!!
Yes, a head of garlic means whole garlic. A segment is a clove. No need to peel because you’re going to discard it anyway after cooking.
just wondering, i dnt really know how to cook, like zero cooking ability. Whole garlic and whole onion, did u mean not to slice them just put the whole onion and garlic???
i couldnt find pork belly in my place, m in a small town in the U.s. ive asked some local stores like safe way, but they dont have it. I ended up buying porkchops coz it has fat on its rim. can i use that and i do use it, do i still need to grill it in the oven?
Yes, whole garlic and onion. You’re going to remove them before serving so you really just want the flavors to get into the meat and sauce.
You can cook humba in a pot, Van. I just opted to cook it in the oven to make the pork rind crisp.