Humba – Sweet Braised Pork Belly

Ingredients:

• 1 kg. pork belly or pork hocks
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup vinegar
• 1 cup pineapple juice
• 1/2 cup crushed pineapple 
• 1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns
• 3 tbsp salted black beans
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 star anise
• 100g dried banana blossoms
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar or sangkaka
• 8 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 2 tbsp oil
• 4-5 cups water (or more, if you like it really saucy)

Marinade:

1. Wash and drain meat. Cut in chunks.
2. Marinate pork cuts in soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and peppercorns for about one hour. But if you have plenty time in preparing this, better marinate it overnight in the fridge.
3. Remove the meat from the marinade. Reserve the marinade sauce.

Cooking:

1. Heat the oil in a pan. Cook until each side of pork is brown. In the process, pork will render its own oil. This makes the dish tastier. Set aside the pork.
2. Get rid of some oil in the pan if it’s too oily.
3. Add the meat marinade, water, laurel leaves, star anise, and pineapple juice and crushed pineapple. Let it boil for 5 minutes.
4. Add meat and black beans. Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes.
5. Then add the brown sugar or chunk of sangkaka. Let simmer in very low heat until the meats gets really tender and sauce thickens.
6. Then add the banana blossoms. Cook for 5 more minutes.
7. The salted black beans were enough to flavor so you adjust the amount of salt to add.
8. Add a few hard-boiled eggs if you wish. Serve with rice. And just like any other braised dish, (Humba tastes great as a leftover)