Humba Recipe – The first thing to understand about this recipe is that it is for a pork dish. When you talk about humba in Filipino cuisine, it usually refers to braised pork. Traditionally the dish is made with pork belly. What makes it so tender is that it’s been slow cooked in a combination of aromatics. The combination consists of soy sauce, vinegar, black peppercorns, garlic, bay leaves, and fermented black beans (tausi). To balance out the savory taste, muscovado sugar is added to sweeten the dish and create the perfect balance of flavors.
When making humba, you’ll find that it has a similar process to making adobo. Unlike adobo, however, humba has a mildly sweet take from the addition of brown or muscovado sugar and/or pineapple. It also doesn’t go through a marinating process.
Another thing that makes this dish different is that it has fermented black beans (tausi) in the mix. Tausi is a type of fermented and salted black soybean. It has a sharp, pungent, and spicy while it tastes salty, somewhat bitter and sweet. Without this ingredient, you just get a sweeter version of adobo. And while there are variations of adobo like beef adobo and eggplant adobo, sweet adobo is not the norm.
What to Know About Humba
Historically, the dish is a derivative of the Chinese Hong-ba (also Hong-Shao-Rou or Red Braised Pork Belly). It is believed that it was introduced by Chinese immigrants and was adapted by our Visaya folks. They replaced some of the ingredients like Shaoxing wine and five-spices with what is more easily found locally.
Another thing to know about humba is that it can have banana blossom in the sauce mixture. It can also be served with hard boiled egg alongside rice. There are many different ways to make humba, but if you want to go the classic route, this is one humba recipe to try:
Other Options to a Humba Recipe
Like many other Filipino dishes, there are variations to Humba. A common variation of the Humba recipe is using chicken as the protein. A similar dish that has this variation is Chicken Sisig. You can also try something different with the sauce and use pineapples as the sweetener. If you want to explore similar or other pork stew dishes in Filipino cuisine, check out “Pata Tim” and “Pochero.” For other pork dishes, there are “Pork Giniling” and “Crispy Pata.” These are just a few of the many delicious pork dishes you can try in Filipino cuisine.
