How to Cook Papaitan- a Filipino Dish

Papaitan is a delicacy in the Philippines. It is also one of the favorite dishes during drinking sessions. Papaitan could use pork meat, cow meat or goat meat.


Steps

Step 1

Clean thoroughly the following parts of the goat meat: ¼-kilo skin, ¼-kilo intestines, 2/4 kilo meat.

Step 2

Cut in small cubes or small pieces measuring ½ inch and soak in pineapple juice for 30 minutes to 1 hour. This is to remove the unusual odor of the meat and to make the meat tastier.

Step 3

Slice all of the following into tiny strips: one bulb of onion, 1-inch ginger, 5 pieces of red pepper, and 10 gloves of garlic and sauté with vegetable oil until tender.

Step 4

Drain the pineapple juice from the meat and mix with the condiments and sauté. Keep cooking and mixing until the meat has started to become tender. Do not stop mixing.

Step 5

Add 4 to 5 small cups of water and cover. Cook until the meat is tender.

Step 6

Get 1/3 teaspoon of goat bile (apdo in the native language) and add. You may add less or more according to how bitter you want the dish to be. Taste to determine. Allow to boil for another 30 minutes.

Step 7

Add salt and seasoning to add taste and flavor. Serve hot.


Tips

You can use a pressure cooker to reduce time of boiling.

You can forgo the addition of red pepper, but pepper adds flavor and richness to the broth.

The bile is the main ingredient that is why Pinoys call it “papaitan” from the root word "pait,” meaning bitter.

You can reduce the amount of bile according to your taste.

Serve hot because the broth is tastier when hot.


Warnings

This dish goes well with beer and alcoholic beverages. Be sure that you do not have allergies from goat meat.

Wash the meat well to avoid food contamination.

Cook the meat well with the bile to avoid food contamination.

Savor the taste of papaitan. You would not dare miss papaitan when you visit the Philippines.

You could also experiment at home and try it.

Aside from papaitan, there are dishes that are also delectable. Balut is very popular in the Philippines as a necessary food - "pampalakas ng tuhod" (to strengthen the knees,) one which adventurous persons oftentimes dare to venture into, like Holly Jahangiri , a professional writer from Texas and author of A Puppy not a Guppy. She tasted balut and this is what she said. There are “adobo” and “sisig” which are all meat dishes. They are a delight to the taste buds. You can now cook your own papaitan.