When I was growing up, one of my favourite Filipino foods was Tocino.  Tocino is like a type of Filipino bacon, made of thin sliced pork shoulder in a sweet red cure.  It was always one of my favourite things to eat, especially on top of some steamed rice.  When I first tasted this recipe, it took me back to my childhood (and made me wish I had some rice ready to eat it with!)

While brainstorming ideas for our food cart, I thought back to Tocino and came up with the idea of using it in a slider.  We can’t just use some store bought Tocino for this, so we’ll be curing it ourselves using the recipe below:

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 pound of boneless pork shoulder
• 4 tablespoons cane sugar
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon annato powder
• 2 teaspoons granulated garlic
• 2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon prague powder #1

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Take the pork shoulder and slice it thinly into 1/8 – 1/4 inch slices – this is easier to do if you partially freeze the shoulder first
2. Mix all of the remaining ingredients together to form the curing mixture
   
3. Mix the sliced pork into the curing mixture and mix well
   
4. Place the mixture into a ziploc bag or non-reactive container and put in the fridge for 3 days, mixing the meat around every day to keep the cure distributed
5. Once cured, the Tocino will be good in the fridge for at least a week because of the vinegar, salt, and prague powder helping to preserve it
6. Cook by frying or grilling over medium heat for a couple of minutes a side – the pork is thin so it will cook quickly and you don’t want to use a high heat to avoid burning the sugar in it

Here’s how we’ll be serving it as a slider on the cart, on a Filipino Pandesal bun with some tangy green mango slaw on top – so far everyone that’s tried it has loved it and we can’t wait to bring it to the streets of Hamilton this summer from the MeatVentures Meat Wagon!