Longganisa is the new adobo!

Longganisa’s varied tastes compare to that of our famous adobo

Longganisa
Sausage
casing stuffed with spicy meat: a tube of animal intestine or another tube-shaped casing stuffed with finely chopped pork or other meat

Microsoft® Encarta® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
[15th century. Via Old French saussiche < medieval Latin salsicius "made by salting" < Latin salsus, 14th century past participle of sallere “to salt”]
Microsoft® Encarta® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


If longganisa is chorizo and chorizo is a sausage, the root word of sausage suggests that chorizo is actually salted meat encased in animal intestine. Perhaps back in the 1600s, chorizo was made and preserved by salting alone. The Iberian sausage was introduced to Manila and later, to the other regions of the country. However, people in some regions may have lacked the necessary ingredients in making chorizo, and given the Filipinos ingenuity, they substituted it with the indigenous spices, altering the recipe and making it their own.

For instance, in the arid lands of Ilocos, only heat and dry-tolerant garlic and tobacco grow throughout the year. Rains are hard to come by in the northernmost tip of Luzon. Know for their frugality, Ilokanos make do with what they have — signature vinegar and garlic — and use it to make longganisa with that distinct tangy flavor with an aftertaste of vinegar.

In Luzon’s central plains, the land is more fertile and the sky, more forgiving. Here, rice is produced abundantly, earning the name the rice bowl of the Philippines. Where rice grows, the sugar can too and the Tagalogs use this sugar to add flavor to their local longganisa, the most famous being the Pampanga longganisa. Much of its success is owed to a family business which turned the sweet longganisa to a lucrative and almost-national business venture.

As for longganisa’s the other regions, I’ve yet to discover how the flavors came to be. I’ve a long way to go.