/ omit cilantro to keep it traditional
This is the version that started it all. This dish was made popular in Pampanga by a street vendor, Aling Lucing who upgraded what was originally a sisig salad* into what we know today as the OG version: pork head grilled and chopped up into a hash, fried with chicken liver and mixed with an umami-tangy sauce specifically using calamansi (an indigenous lime-orange-like citrus).
*The first recorded existence of sisig was in a Kapampangan dictionary from 1732 indicating a salad of unripened green fruit doused in vinegar used to treat a night of overindulgence aka a hangover. The dish’s name comes from “sisigan,” an old Tagalog word which means “to make sour.”
Sisig as we know it today came about as an answer to waste. While US Air Force personnel were stationed at the Clark Base in Pampanga, locals were horrified to see all the unused pig heads being thrown in the garbage so they offered to purchase these for cheap. They boiled the pig heads, sliced off the ears and jowls and added these to their salad creating the prototype of today's sisig.
grilled pork head chopped up, fried with chicken liver, mixed with an umami-tangy sauce, topped with red onion
CLASSIC PORK SISIG
Serves 2-3.
Ingredients
1.5 tbs Kusi sisig seasoning
1 lb pig ears/cheeks/jaw meat
1/4 lb chicken liver, more if you like
1 tbs butter
1/2 medium red onion, diced
Neutral oil
Directions
Boil pig head parts until tender.
Grill along with the chicken liver over charcoal. Alternatively, sear in a cast-iron pan to bring out flavor and color.
Chop up the meat then add to cast-iron pan along with Kusi sisig seasoning.
Add butter, mix well and top with red onions.
Serve in the hot pan with rice on the side.
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