Everything You Need To Know To Make The Perfect Menudo
If you're a new cook, you know there are many dishes that you need to master or at least know to make. From the fast and easy chicken adobo recipe to the long and slow cooking necessary to make the perfect kaldereta dish, these Pinoy dishes and others like them should be in your list of dishes to learn.
While the list of these delicious Filipino recipes one should learn can span pages, there is one recipe that we think should be one of the first dishes any new cook should learn by heart: the pork menudo. Here's what you need to know when making this Pinoy favorite:
1 The pork menudo recipe is a stew but it cooks quickly.
The menudo recipe is actually a stew recipe that cooks fast. It's a stew because you need to tenderize the little chunks of pork by simmering it in a liquid for a long period of time before you can add the other ingredients. If you add the other ingredients before you tenderize the pork, you run the chance of overcooking the potatoes and carrots and turning these into mush before the pork is even tender.Â
So basically, any new cook who cooks the menudo will learn the art of how to tenderize meat over a long and slow process. At the same time, one learns the correct timing of when to add ingredients to the dish so it will cook at relatively the same time, too. Â
2 Slow cooking makes it a delicious dish.Â
Not only will new cooks learn a valuable cooking technique but they will also learn the value of developing flavors through time, rather than just through mere ingredients. The ingredients, after all, are delicious on its own but the difference in flavor between a dish that has simmered for 10 minutes is highly incomparable to the same dish after it has simmered for at least one hour.Â
This development of flavor through time is a valuable cooking lesson any new cook will appreciate to learn once they've had a taste of dishes made with this much care.Â
3 Small cubed meat pieces make menudo an easy and fast-cooking stew.Â
While the menudo, as a stew, benefits through the long and slow cooking process, it also does not take as long as it normally would if it were a more traditional stew such as the beef kaldereta recipe. This is because the menudo uses small cubed pork pieces instead of larger, chunkier pieces of beef or pork which you would normally use in other stew recipes. Since it has small chunks, the menudo will take less time to cook but would be no less delicious in the end.Â
4 Similar-sized ingredients will help cook your veggies to perfection.Â
All cooks need to learn to respect the knife and its many uses in the kitchen. For the menudo, it will help the cook to appreciate cutting their ingredients into similar-sized pieces. That's because if they are too sloppy with their knife skills, they will end up with chunks of potatoes that cooked to perfection and other chunks that are either so mushy the chunks have disintegrated or still too hard to be tender to the bite.Â
Since the menudo requires small chunks of its ingredients, learning and then practicing to use their knife to dice, chop, and slice ingredients properly or to the best of their ability is crucial to the cooking process and eventually, how the menudo will turn out when it's finally ready to serve. Â
Every new cook needs to learn many Filipino recipes, but this, the pork menudo recipe, is one recipe that will teach you many techniques and cooking lessons in one easy recipe. Plus, it's super delicious! If you're convinced you need this recipe in your life, why not try any of these pork menudo recipe versions, too:Â
