How to Make Hamon Bulakenya | Farm To Table
Aired (February 18, 2024): Not only does Chef JR Royol teach us how to cook Hamon Bulakenya today, but he also imparts the significance of the food during Bulacan’s independence from Spanish rule!
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00:00 One of the stops of our food adventure today is the Durran Farm here in San Ildefonso, Bulacan.
00:06 And in my story with the farmers here, I discovered that they have a unique plant that they grow as a Bulacan.
00:15 It's a type of ham that is part of their rich history.
00:19 During the liberation of Bulacan, as you can imagine, a big pigging happened.
00:25 So definitely, this is ready and of course, there's a lot of pork belly in their menu.
00:31 And one of the ones that's attracting is their ham from Kenya.
00:35 So we have here our pork belly. I would want to remove this area.
00:41 There. And we only have a few pieces of bone here that we will remove.
00:46 So basically, that's the preparation that we need to do for the meat.
00:54 We can now turn on our stove.
00:56 For our ham recipe, we will be using a braising technique.
01:03 Basically, what it means is we will sear our pork first.
01:09 Then we will tenderize it using stock or any combination of liquid.
01:20 So once we get this color, we will just return it to our chopping board to scrape off the color.
01:28 Once we have removed most of the discoloration, we can now return it to the pan.
01:42 [Music]
01:52 Using the same pot or pan, we will now add the braising liquid.
01:58 So skin side down, we'll add in our pineapple juice.
02:05 So our pineapple juice will not only add sweetness to our ham, but will also help tenderize our pork belly slab.
02:15 And also to add layer to our braising liquid and to the flavors of our pork belly, we'll just add this bubbly liquid here, beer.
02:27 So you don't have to worry about using alcohol while cooking because the entire cooking process would basically evaporate any spirit or alcohol that our beer has.
02:40 And by the time that it reduces and becomes like a sauce consistency, our food is totally evaporated or safe for consumption.
02:50 And we'll just season this with salt.
02:56 A generous amount of salt.
02:58 Our slab is a bit big.
03:00 And star anise.
03:04 And of course, pepper.
03:08 I'll also add whole peppercorns.
03:16 So at this point, all of the most difficult parts of the cooking process are done.
03:23 We'll just cover this and let it chillax for about 2 hours until our meat is fork tender.
03:31 And then we'll finish off the dish.
03:33 Earlier, we started tenderizing the ham we're preparing, a type of ham that has a deep connection to the history of Bulacan.
03:48 This ham is one of the only ones that was prepared in the province of Bulacan after the Spanish took over the province in 1898.
03:58 So we've been cooking this for almost 3 hours.
04:01 We're braising our pork.
04:03 So we can now finish the dish.
04:06 We'll just sprinkle some sugar.
04:10 [Music]
04:33 [Music]
04:55 [BLANK_AUDIO]