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:
- Wash and drain meat. Cut in chunks.
- 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.
- Remove the meat from the marinade. Reserve the marinade sauce.
Cooking:
- 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.
- Get rid of some oil in the pan if it’s too oily.
- Add the meat marinade, water, laurel leaves, star anise, and pineapple juice and crushed pineapple. Let it boil for 5 minutes.
- Add meat and black beans. Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes.
- Then add the brown sugar or chunk of sangkaka. Let simmer in very low heat until the meats gets really tender and sauce thickens.
- Then add the banana blossoms. Cook for 5 more minutes.
- The salted black beans were enough to flavor so you adjust the amount of salt to add.
- 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)