Fooddadi Style: Pork Steak (Bistek Tagalog style with no Soy Sauce)

First of all, even though it's quite late, happy new year to everyone. To start off the year, we continue our ongoing series Fooddadi Style. In this post we tackle a common Pinoy dish which is the Bistek Tagalog. As with our other Fooddadi Style entries, we focus on the easy-to-do recipes and add a little twist (either by chance or not hehe)

Bistek Tagalog is a dish that I grew up wanting to eat more of it. It's not a usual dish in our table at home but it was a dish a staple in school canteens and eateries. Suffice to say that if I see this on the menu, I would most likely go for it.

Ingredients

I bought around half a kilo of pork (steak cut) and a lemon. I also prepared some onions (cut into circles), a couple cloves of garlic minced and two tablespoons of sugar.

Cooking

I marinated the pork with a quarter of a cup of fish sauce and freshly squeezed lemon juice . After an hour, I fried the pork until it is a bit brown but not completely cooked. I set it aside for later.

Next, in the same pan where I fried the pork, I sauteed some onions until a bit brown or it is starting to caramelized. I used white onions but it would be better if you are using red onions for this dish.

Set it aside and start to saute the garlic. Saute until brown. When the garlic is brown, add in the marinade and let it boil before adding the pork. Upon adding the pork, add about half a cup of water. This will help in softening the pork as well as dilute the saltiness of the fish sauce. Cover and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. Add in the onions half of the onions after 15 minutes of covering. After 30 minutes, add about 2 tablespoons of sugar to dilute the saltiness. If you feel it is still quite salty, you can add more sugar.

Final Product

Somehow, the dish turned out looking like a normal Bistek Tagalog. The difference is that the color is quite lighter than the original dish. I did use pork here as well. I will update the recipe again with beef as the protein.