Filipino Cooking Methods

If you’ve heard about various Filipino dishes, here’s a summary of a list of dishes and how they are cooked.

  • Adobo − meats (pork, chicken, beef) or seafood traditionally cooked in vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic.
  • Babad/Binabad/Ibinabad− to marinate.
  • Banli/Binanlian/Pabanli − blanched.
  • Bagoong/Binagoongan− cooked with fermented fish paste or bagoong.
  • Binalot – literally “wrapped.” This generally refers to dishes wrapped in banana leaves. The wrapper is generally inedible (in contrast to lumpia — see below).
  • Binuro − fermented or pickled.
  • Busa/Pabusa – toasted with garlic and a small quantity of cooking oil, as in adobong mani.
  • Daing/Dinaing/Padaing − marinated with garlic, vinegar, and black peppers. Sometimes dried and usually fried before eating.
  • Guinataan  − cooked with coconut milk.
  • Guisa/Guisado/Ginisa or Gisado − sautéed with garlic, onions and tomatoes
  • Halabos/Hinalabos – mostly for shellfish. Steamed in their own juices and sometimes carbonated soda.
  • Hilaw/Sariwa – unripe (for fruits and vegetables), raw (for meats). Also used for uncooked food in general (as in lumpiang sariwa).
  • Hinurno – baked in an oven or roasted.
  • Ihaw/Inihaw − grilled over coals.
  • Inasnan – food preserved with salt. May be broiled. Meat, fish or vegetables.
  • Kinilaw or Kilawin − meat or fish marinated in vinegar or calamansi juice along with garlic, onions, ginger, tomato, peppers.
  • Laga/Nilaga/Palaga − boiled, sometimes with onions and black peppercorns.
  • Nilasing − cooked with an alcoholic beverage.
  • Lechon/Nilechon − roasted over a spit.
  • Lumpia – wrapped with an edible wrapper.
  • Minatamis − cooked with sugar, or with other sweeteners such as panucha (panela).
  • Pasingao – steaming fish, meat, fowl or shellfish.
  • Pinakbet − to cook with vegetables usually with sitaw (yardlong beans), calabaza, talong (eggplant), and ampalaya (bitter melon) among others and bagoong.
  • Paksiw/Pinaksiw − cooked in vinegar. For example, lechon paksiw or paksiw na talakitok
  • Pangat/Pinangat − boiled in salted water with tomatoes.
  • Palaman/Pinalaman− “filled” as in siopao, though “palaman” also refers to the filling in a sandwich.
  • Pesaboiling sauteed fish with ginger, vegetables and patis.
  • Pinakuluan – boiled.
  • Pinais – food wrapped in leaves (banana or alagao), and steamed
  • Piniato – peanut brittle.
  • Pinausukan – smoking fish, meat, and fowl just before eating.
  • Prito/Pinirito − fried or deep-fried.
  • Pasingaw – steamed, usually with a banana leaf.
  • Relleno/Relyeno– stuffed. For example,
  • Tapa/Tinapa – dried and smoked. Tapa refers to meat treated in this manner, mostly marinated and then dried and fried afterwards. Tinapa meanwhile is almost exclusively associated with smoked fish.
  • Sarza/Sarciado – cooked with a thick sauce.
  • Sinangag – fried rice.
  • Sinuam – boiling sauteed fish or shellfish in ginger and pepper leaves.
  • Sigang/Sinigang − boiled, usually with a tamarind base. Variant bases are guava, raw mangoes, calamansi also known as calamondin, and almost any other sour fruit abundant in the locality.
  • Tosta/Tinosta/Tostado – toasted, as in polvoron or Mamon Tostado.
  • Torta/Tinorta/Patorta – to cook with eggs in the manner of an omelet.
  • Totso/Totcho – cooked with fermented black beans. The name of both a cooking method and dish.

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