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Filipino-Style Spiced Vinegar

Two glass bottles filled with chile vinegar surrounded by more Filipino produce.
Photo by Justin Walker

Filipino food is always served with condiments within easy reach, even at a street vendor where you stand and eat. These condiments let diners customize the flavor of the meal in the form of a self-mixed dipping sauce, which is generally known assawsawan. Diners get individual bowls and use their spoons or forks to mash chiles with vinegar as they see fit, or stir togetherpatisandcalamansi, or make whatever sawsawan they prefer. Store this version—an all-purpose sweet-and-spicy vinegar—in clean mason jars or keep it in repurposed glass bottles. Note that this recipe can be adjusted as you like—try using different chiles or other spices like bay leaf.

Ingredients

Makes 3 cups (720 ml)

10 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
1/4 cup (35 g) dried fruit, such as raisins, cherries, or mangos (optional)
5 whole bird’s-eye chiles
1 (3-inch/7.5 cm) knob fresh ginger, scrubbed and minced
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
3 to 4 cups (720 ml to 1 L) white sugarcane vinegar
1/4 cup (60 ml) fish sauce
  1. Step 1

    Put the garlic, dried fruit, chiles, ginger, and peppercorns in a clean glass jar or bottle and cover with the vinegar and fish sauce. Loosely cover or cap the jar and let sit at room temperature in a dark place for 48 hours.

    Step 2

    Transfer the jar to the refrigerator. The pinakurat will keep indefinitely, and the flavors will continue to develop over time.

Excerpted fromI Am a Filipino: And This Is How We Cookby Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2018. Buy the full book fromAmazon.
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  • I want to make this but I have a question. What's the correct ratio for the chiles vs the vinegar? We call this "sinamak" in Bacolod or "pinakurat" in Cebu, and I know bottles of this sold in stores in the Philippines have a lot of chiles in them. The recipe indicates "5 whole bird’s-eye chiles" for 750 mL of vinegar, and the photo obviously has a lot of chiles, so the recipe may have a typo. Thank you.

    • 匿名

    • New Jersey

    • 11/23/2020

  • Awsome, I love the fish sauce in this recipe. Question, do I have to keep it refrigerated? I don’t when I make this without the fish sauce. Thanks

    • Vafarmer

    • 9/22/2020

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