Tocino - Pork

Pork tocino is cured beef, chicken, or pork. Some people call this cut sweet red pork due to its color. Tocino is called “bacon” in Spanish. The Pinoy version isn’t the same as Western bacon or salty, cubed Spanish tocino. Pork tocino often comes from the pork belly. However, you can get pork shoulder or another cut if you want something different for your tocino.

Filipinos got their first taste of pork tocino when Lolita O. Hizon invented it during the Spanish colonization. She preserved and fermented her neighbor’s leftover pork using a traditional local method, and slowly refined her technique until it gained mainstream success.

Tocino is cured like ham and bacon, but with the addition of red food coloring. Tocino used to be cured using salitre (saltpeter), a food preservative and colorant. Nowadays, people mostly use pink curing salt or Prague powder. Sodium phosphate and Vitamin C powder are must-haves for curing pork tocino as well.

Once you’ve cooked pork tocino, you can enjoy its sweet, garlicky, and peppery goodness. The premium pork tocino from TenderBites packs savory taste and great tenderness. Get this prime pork cut for your next meal today — cut and packed in any way you want.

• Tosilog (tocino, fried rice (sinangag), and egg (itlog)
• Crunchy tocino with scrambled eggs
• Tocino cuapao
• Tocino pizza