Pork Caldereta

Caldereta is another versatile recipe for a variety of meats. Like the pasta, you can include a variety of ingredients depending upon what is available to the cook. It can include several to just some simple ingredient. Nevertheless, it has almost similar taste except for small difference because of the ingredients that was used to make the dish. In fact, there are several variations of the recipe depending on which locality it is cooked. All of the variations however are all delicious. Of course one may have preference to one variant to the others also. The customary meat that is cooked in this recipe should be beef. However, you can also use pork, mutton, lamb, chicken, etc. Of course if you crave for the dish and you have little time to prepare and you don’t have time also to go some place to have it, you can still cook it for yourself using meat that is easily tenderized which I just did with this recipe which I will share in this blog. Of course you can opt to have in the freezer pre-tenderized beef but if you don’t then this is a good alternative.

Ingredients:

1 kg Pork (ribs are recommended or chops will do just fine)

250 g Potato (cut into large cubes)

125 g Carrots (cut in big pieces)

½ tsp. Black pepper (powder)

2 tbsp. Garlic (minced)

1 pc. Onion (medium, thinly sliced)

½ cup Tomato sauce

1 can Liver spread (small)

1 pc. Green bell pepper (cut into large squares)

½ cup Safflower oil (for frying the potatoes and carrots)

2 tbsp. Safflower oil (for sautéing)

½ tsp. Iodized salt

1 tbsp. Sugar

½ cup Water

¼ cup Dark soy sauce

1 pc. Hot dog (cut into pieces)

Cooking Instruction:

In a frying pan heat the oil and fry the potatoes and carrots until golden brown. Set aside on paper towels to remove excess pan. Get 2 tbsp. Oil and transfer into a pressure cooker and heat the transferred oil to near its smoke point. When smoke point is nearly reached, sauté on it the garlic and onion until garlic is golden brown and onion starts to caramelize. Saute the hotdog and toss in the pork and black pepper. Cook for 2 minutes with stirring and add the soy sauce, water, sugar, and liver spread. Mix well and cover to pressure cook for about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, turn off the flame and allow cooling normally. Do not vent the pressure to hasten cooling; the additional time which is about 10-15 minutes consumed for normal cooling is used as additional cooking time to tenderize the meat. When cooled, open the pressure cooker and skim off any excess oil that floats to lower the dish’s fat content. Toss in the potato and carrots and the tomato sauce, mix. Again turn on the heat and mix from time to time taking care not to shred the soft meat (this is best done not by using a ladle but by lifting the pressure cooker and swirling the contents. When it boils, simmer for about 2 minutes. You may now enjoy the hot caldereta with rice or some bread.