The making of the Ultimate Pinoy Burger (2024)

A burger designed and created by yours truly, a burger created with lots of Filipino elements and ingredients, the Ultimate Pinoy Burger.

Yesterday was the 5th year anniversary of Ang Sarap and we made something really special and it was not a cake like we had for the past years, what wemade was this unique burger, a burger designed and created by yours truly, a burger created with lots of Filipino elements and ingredients, a burger that can be proudly called as the Ultimate Pinoy Burger.

I was planning to make this for a long time already and I was thinking what I should include on it, what ingredients will match together. Do I use adobo? How about a hint of sinigang? What about bagoong? After much deliberation with myself I settled with the following below.

Now let’s go layer by layer:

• Bread – The bread of choice was pandesalthe popular bread we have in the Philippines.
• First Sauce – Creamy garlic mayonnaise, Filipinos love their garlic so it has to be included here.
• Burger Patty – I was thinking of using lechon here but a burger cannot be called one unless it contains a patty so instead of lechon I made it with a mix of sisigand minced beef formed into a patty.
• Cheese – Filipinos also have cheese and nothing can get more Filipino than Kesong Puti, if this is hard to find you can replace it with goats cheese feta which have the same flavour profile.
• Fourth Layer – Another Filipino favourite the Chicharon (pork crackling), which definitely gives this burger some texture. For this I have to make it at home as the commercially available chicharon are not flat so adding them in burgers will be an issue.
• Fifth Layer – To give it another dimension in taste we added some fruit and no other fruit can be more Filipino than the Philippine mango.
• Sixth Layer – We need to have some acidic taste like what pickles give so for this layer we use atchara, the most popular Filipino style pickle made from green papaya.
• Second Sauce – A burger cannot be complete without ketchup so we will add one but for this burger it should be the banana ketchup, again another popular Filipino condiment.

As a bonus we will be serving it with Kamote (Sweet Potato fries) on the side.

The result was amazing, the flavours matched well with each other and we captured the essence of the Philippine cuisine in a burger bun. If I only have a burger joint or a restaurant I would be happily selling this, even non-Filipinos would love the flavour combination on this burger, a nice sampler of what they can expect from our cuisine.

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