Filipino cooking is reflected by how Filipinos like to eat—namely by balancing three predominant elements of taste: sour, salty, and sweet. We love snacking on tart green mangoes with salty, funky shrimp paste (admittedly, I loathed shrimp as a child and would often opt for crunchy bits of rock salt instead). We like putting bits of salty cheese in ice cream (corn and cheese, a.k.a. mais con queso, remains a favorite flavor in the Philippines). Filipino family gatherings, at least in my experience, are often daylong eating binges, interspersed with plenty of karaoke, family gossip, and to my discomfort, heated political discussion, where the desserts are interspersed with the entrées, which, in turn, are enhanced by vinegary condiments, a small bottle or two of soy and/or fish sauce, and wedges of cut citrus (calamansi, ideally, if we can get it stateside, but more often than not, lemons or limes).
Between the big three—sour, salty, and sweet—sour is arguably the foremost element in Filipino food, in that there are varying degrees of sourness in so many of our dishes (with exceptions, of course): Dishes prepared in the style of paksiw (simmered in vinegar) or sinigang (cooked in a sour broth) can be bracingly tart; adobo (marinated in vinegar and soy, then simmered in the marinade along with black pepper and bay leaf) is often more of a balancing act between salty and sour; and in some versions of laswa, a vegetable soup with shrimp from the Hiligaynon-speaking region of the Philippines, firm and tart native tomatoes are added to impart a bit of brightness. (I hadn’t had a sweet raw tomato until I moved to the U.S.)
There are two primary ways of adding sourness to food in Filipino cooking: The first is by utilizing sour and/or unripe fruits, like tamarind, or leaves, like alibangbang or libas. And the second, and more common way, is with vinegar. The addition of vinegar in the cooking process is especially popular because it acts as a preservative; in a tropical climate like the Philippines, where food can go bad very quickly, it’s easy to see how this became common practice.
There are countless types of native vinegars available in the Philippines, differentiated by the ingredient from which they’re derived. Simply put, they’re made in one of two ways, either by
adding yeast starter to raw juice or sap to jumpstart the fermentation process or
by leaving that raw juice or sap out in open vessels (traditionally made of clay) and letting the wild yeast in the air do its work
The yeast converts the sugars in the juice or sap into alcohol, after which bacteria transform the alcohol into acetic acid. Fermentation magic. Out of the many, many vinegars, there are three categories that are most commonly available and widely used: cane vinegar, coconut vinegar, and palm vinegar.
Cane Vinegar
Cane vinegar is the most common vinegar in the Philippines because a small amount of sugarcane yields a relatively high amount of juice. It’s also the most widely available Filipino vinegar overseas—it’s what you’re most likely to see in the U.S. (Datu Puti is a widespread brand).
