How could I resist? Freshly slaughtered baboy ramo or damo (native boar, though probably farm raised, not hunted in the wild) from my favorite organic produce purveyor, Gil Carandang at Herbana Farms? When he told me he had a cooler filled with meat, I instantly asked for all of the ribs and liempo or stomach meat. I purchased some 3 kilos worth of incredibly deep red boar meat, which appeared to have a misleading amount of fat. Who cares that I have never cooked baboy ramo or boar before, this was definitely a challenge… I thought about slow braising the meat, maybe with wine or lots of spices, but in the end, I decided my first experience with baboy ramo should be as close to the real thing as possible… what would someone who had hunted a boar in the wild (and yes, there are still places with wild boar such as Northern Palawan) likely do when they had brought their prize back home to be cooked. I think a long-stewed adobo was a very likely choice…
I have cooked purchased tapang baboy ramo/damo before, excellent, here, and we also had some at a dinner in Vigan, but I have never cooked baboy damo from scratch. I wanted to come close to this very slow cooked adobo that I did in a palayok or clay pot, but indoors on a gas stove. So in the largest Le Creuset dutch oven that we own, I added the sliced ribs/belly boar meat and added just salt, garlic, peppercorns and lots of bay leaves. A healthy amount (a lot) of salt, good coconut vinegar and turned on the heat. About an hour into cooking I was worried how blond it was looking so I added about two tablespoons of kikkoman soy sauce, which should have been a real no-no if I wanted to really do this as I had made my earlier adobo in a palayok.
This gurgled over low heat for some 2.5 to 3 hours, with only a little water added to the pot. It was rather “dryish” in the end, but the most surprisingly discovery of all was that there was relatively little rendered fat. What looked so incredibly fatty in the first photo up top actually yielded a far less fatty pot than I would have guessed. The meat of wild boar is acutally quite lean, and flavorful and not too “gamey” at all.
I was thrilled with the final results, which we ate only the day after after the flavors had time to meld a bit, and we re-fried half of the adobo yielding the crisp highly burnished pieces of meat below, superb with vinegar and chillies. And with the rest of the stew, I mixed in some of the fried pieces so that you had a softer, saucier side to the boar adobo, and crisper bits as well. I really liked it a lot. Definitely not your run of the mill supermarket pork, but I think I could have cooked this with less salt. And if I were storing this for the long term, there wouldn’t have been enough lard rendered.
The next time I try this, I will do a mixture of wild boar and fattier domesticated pork. That way i will have the fat and moisture of a slow cooked stew with the distinct flavor of the boar. If you are a pinoy style adobo fan, you may want to revisit some of these earlier posts:
My first entry on Adobo, a piece written as part of the “Lasang Pinoy” Series, here one I called “Blonde and Brunette Adobo a la Marketman”
Adobong Pusit / Squid in it’s own ink
Adobong Kangkong or Water Spinach
Humba, or a Visayan style, Chinese influenced adobo
Adobong Atay at Balun-balunan / Sauteed Chicken Livers & Gizzards
Chicken & Pork Adobo with Duhat Balsamic Vinegar
Fried Adobo Flakes
Roasted Baby Lamb Adobo
Grilled Duck Adobo a la Marketman
Roast Adobo Porkloin
The Best Pork Adobo a la Marketman
Rice Toppings a la Marketman
Baby Back Rib Adobo
Adobo, Gata at Sili a la Marketman
29 Responses
Oh yum!!! I also got wild boar from Gil :) I love it when he has some available! I made a slow roast stuffed with chorizo but this adobo looks and sounds like the perfect way to enjoy it…I’ll try this next time!
Never tasted baboy damo and it looks interesting.Hope I come across this on the table of someone one of these days…
It’s my birthday today MM so I took a day off and visited the Metro Supermarket-Marketmarket(First time). I was curious and now understand why you mention that often. It has a wide array of items you may not find in other supers. There were beans galore-haricot,lima,etc and different teas,honey,mustards,canned items. There were bleached and unbleached flour,gluten,wheat etc etc. Quite a lot of choices. No wonder you find a lot of things that you need there.I took note of stocks so I know where to run when needed. I proceeded to Bacchus (Rockwell) to look at what they have (Lovely Creusetware and Mac knives..) and also went to Royce Chocolates as well. I ended up at Cooks Exchange to buy some baking choco and disposable pastry bags. It’s a fun way to spend one’s birthday. Thanks MM for this site!!
marisse, HAPPY BIRTHDAY… that sounds like an ideal way for a foodie to spend the day! Next time, while at Market!Market! check out flavors n spices, a small spice shop outdoors near the cross walk to Serendra…
I have not tried adobong baboy damo. It was always tapa style. Looks really good though butlike you, I’d like it to have a bit more sauce.
O.T. – happy birthday marisse. What a really fun way to spend your special day.
Happy Birthday Marrise!!
Hope I can have those baboy ramo tonight. I’ve been wondering what is the “lasa” of such kind. Wish there’s a meat store in our place where I can find a freshly slaughtered baboy ramo. For the past two years, my hubby has been planning to buy a wild boar couple. The only hesitation lang is baka di namin sha maalagaan mabuti because were too busy. But if there’s anyone who knows how much does it cost and where can we find a good and reliable breeder, please let me know. Thanks in advance.
It’s so nice to spend the whole day browsing MM’s archives. Normally, I would just check out what’s new and wala ng oras to comment and browse, but now…what a wonderful day!!
A Dumagat friend used to supply us with freshly killed wild boar, plump from gorging on the yellow fruit of large trees found in Cagayan. This diet made the meat taste just slightly sweet and sour. Very pleasant to the palate. We cut the meat into thin strips, salted and sun dried it to produce the best tapa ever. Dumagats stored the fat in bamboo tubes where they solidified into tubes, and stored for future use.
ps of course now i don’t eat wild boar.
kalami ani oi.. prito pa jud? unsa kahay taste ani sa?
yum2x..
MM, I first tasted adobong baboy damo in Cagayan de Oro at the Kagayanon Restaurant and it’s really tender and so full of flavor, yummy! A word of caution though to us who love it – it’s considered an endangered specie already and we might end up in trouble with the law. :-) I remember offering the raw meat in the supermarket where I worked for before only to be asked by the government to pull it out of our display rack because the sale of it is banned.
andykamatis, baboy damo is raised in farms all over luzon, so I suspect farm raised meat is NOT considered endangered. There is even a place near Nasugbu that has not only baboy damo but also ostrich, turkeys, ducks, geese, etc. all organically raised, though wickedly expensive. I would agree that wild hunted/caught baboy ramo would probably be off-limits…
the raw meat looks incredibly fresh! what a buy!
I watched a show on the Discovery Channel once that documented escaped farm pigs revert to wild boars within the first year and by the second generation grow back their tusks. I wonder what would happen to wild boars generation after generation of domestication.
Off-topic… I’m getting excited for tomorrow. the “show” starts at about 11:00am Manila time. If only I didn’t have work. The earliest I’ll able to watch it is by the time I go home from work at around 5pm.
We recently had wild boar, which we roasted. I agree that the meat is less fatty than regular pork. It lacks that buttery mouthfeel of nicely marbled pork.
I had this as a child in Cagayan de Oro as well. I have not gotten over the taste! Quite exceptional, at least in my memory.
WILD BOAR seems to be the only kind of pork that they have in Papua New Guinea. These are prized possessions. They use these to give out as bride price. The more boars you have, the higher your status in the community. A Papua New Guinean friend who only has girls for children gave a Wild Boar Tusk Necklace to my son as a gift. A REALLY BIG HONOR TO HAVE BEEN GIVEN ONE.
I was not brave enough to taste the pork of a wild boar because it has an unpleasant odor. I was told that the reason for this is that the boar is not castrated (“kapon” in tagalog).
90% of the “wild boar” meat in Europe is imported from farms in the American South and did not spend their childhood in Tuscany. So much for that fantasy.
Hi MM,
I’ve been a quiet fan/observer/user/foodie of this blog. Thank you for sharing tips/recipes/experiments in this blog. I’ve spread the word about this blog to my friends kapwa-Pinoys here in Toronto who are missing Pinoy Food.
crispyron
happy birthday, marisse!!! godbless!
haooy birthday, marisse!
though we haven’t personally met, i enjoy reading your comments here in MM’s blog.
Hope you had a wonderful day!
shyet! this looks & sounds gooood!
I wonder if anyone check if our baboy damo’s fat is monounsaturated like the Iberian pig. if you domesticate this baboy damp and fed them with acorn will it achive the same quality as Iberian pig. hmmmm…..
It is also good in sampalok sinigang with all the veggies and estofado.
Are there oak nuts (acorns) back home, Jun?
Or maybe langka seeds, but maybe need to boil them first?
Jun et al, we feed our pigs that are waiting to be roasted lots of ripe chicos for a few days before they are slaughtered. They love chicos. And we happen to have thousands of fruit during the right season… But honestly, I can’t tell if it changes the taste of the meat if they eat the fruit for say a week or two only before they are eaten…
Yup I agree it’s hard to tell but I’m sure there are people who will swear that the meat taste different from a normal commercial pig. Although for me knowing that the food that I will eat is almost as close to natural is already a plus factor for me to pay extra to reward the people who have the courage to continue to produce food that are not chemically tainted or artifically produce.
hi betty q, I don’t think there is acorn in philippines. I’m just day dreaming of domesticating baboy damo for a lechon and jamon. hehehe
Let me just clear something here,BABOY DAMO is not a domesticated pig, nor a native pig, either a pet pig, baboy damo is a wild, eating anything from the wild or attacking nearby farms at night.Some here may think that eating a domesticated pig that looks like a wild boar is already a baboy ramo! No! they are totally differs, though native pig is almost similar in appearance with that of wild boar, there are characteristics that makes them differert even they are in the same species. A wild baboy damo has longer snout and sharper coiled teeth that almost resembles a fang! they have shiny mean looking hair, ears are pointee small,and small feet. taste of meat is a little bit of pungent and its more pungent if you got a male boar that almost not edible in taste. there are techniques anyway in avoiding this nasty smell, before buchering, scrubb all its body with dry soil, and if its a male boar, just after killing it,(killing? a murderous term) remove its “balls” immediately and also use soil on its body.(removing its balls “YAG-BA” will avoid the spread of nasty liquids to the meat and the soil will sip the liquid coming out of its pores, a normal sweat i called adrenalin sweat that normally comes out of their skin while chasing them, its like a form of protection against human enemies)My suggestions are mainly wild but effective thought not scientific but it will really work! Why i know this? because im a hunter from the cagayan valley who loves hunting in the wild everytime i step my foot in the philippines. And the taste of original wild baboy damo is tantamount and totally different…..
GenerSumilang,
wow! thanks for the tip. i will check and buy a baboy damo, the bulua highway in cag. de oro is the site for vendors of slaughtered baboy damo. one or two pigs usually.