Traditional Food: Etag (Dried and salted pork/meat)

Traditional Food: Etag (Dried and salted pork/meat)

A Cordilleran food that is preserved small slab of meat (esp. pork) made through salt-treating, sun-drying; and/or smoking.Its color is partly dark brown with noticeable whitish yellow fat color. It is used together with chicken in every special occasions, rituals and offerings.

Etag (Igorot) or Innasin (Iloko)

Etag is called kinuday by the Ibaloi and kiniing by the Kankanaey in Benguet, but these tribes have almost similar ways for smoking and curing pork meat.

Some provinces cure their Etag by hanging the meat over a raging fire. Other provinces store the meat in earthen jars to stew in its own juice for weeks.

Pork with Backfat (sliced into 1-inch thick slabs, it should have no bones and must have 20% to 80% fat per slab)SaltBanga/Binulnay (Earthen Jar) or any container enough for the meatFirewood

Ingredients and Materials

PROCEDURE

Evenly rub generous amount of salt to pork meat.Place the meat slabs in a covered earthen jar and cure for 24 hours.After curing, place the meat slabs on a good place where you can soak it in the sun. * It is important that you turn the slabs regularly to sun dry all the sides.* After then sun sets, put them back to the container and repeat for 3 days.

Sun - DryingEvenly rub generous amount of salt to pork meat.Place the meat slabs in a covered earthen jar and cure for 24 hours.After curing, smoke the meat two to three hours a day for at least 2 weeks.

Smoking

The resulting etag can be eaten raw or mixed with variety of dishes. Some of the dishes are etag with dried beans, etag with pinikpikan etag with lepeg (lepeg is a leftover of rice wine fermentation)