Lechon sauce substitutes

The best answer, and closer to the bottle than any substitute. Combine ½ cup fine breadcrumbs or two slices of toasted bread blitzed, ½ cup cane or white vinegar, ¼ cup brown sugar, ½ cup water or pork stock, 3 tbsp liver spread or two sauteed chicken livers mashed, 2 cloves minced garlic, 1 tsp salt and ½ tsp black pepper.

Best for

lechon, lechon kawali, crispy pata, roast pork belly, fried chicken

Simmer everything together over medium-low heat for 10 minutes, whisking, until it coats a spoon. Blend if you want it smooth. Cool before serving; it thickens further. Taste and correct at the end, because the balance is personal: more vinegar if it tastes flabby, more sugar if it bites too hard. The breadcrumbs are the thickener and are not optional, since the sauce has to cling to crackling rather than run off it. It keeps about a week in the fridge and thickens as it cools, so thin it with a spoon of water when you reheat.

The fastest genuinely close copy, because liverwurst brings the one flavour that is hard to fake: the mineral, slightly sweet depth of cooked liver. Everything else in lechon sauce is sugar, vinegar and thickening, all of which you can add in a minute.

Best for

lechon kawali, crispy pata, roast pork, fried chicken, dipping sauce for grilled meats

Whisk over low heat until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and pepper and a crushed garlic clove if you have one. It comes out smoother and softer than the bottled sauce, which has a slightly grainy body from breadcrumbs, and it is less sweet, so taste and add more sugar. Smoked liverwurst will make the sauce taste smoky, which is not wrong with roast pork but is not lechon sauce either. Whisk in a tablespoon of breadcrumbs if you want the proper clinging texture.

Not an imitation but a legitimate alternative, and the honest recommendation. Filipinos eat roast pork with plain spiced vinegar at least as often as with lechon sauce, and it does the sauce's most important job, cutting through pork fat, more effectively than anything sweet.

Best for

lechon kawali, crispy pata, roast pork belly, grilled meats, fried fish

Combine ½ cup cane or white vinegar, 3 crushed garlic cloves, a sliced chilli, ½ tsp salt and a pinch of sugar. Let it sit 20 minutes. It is thin, sharp and savoury with almost no sweetness and no body, so it will not coat a piece of crackling the way lechon sauce does; you dip rather than spoon. Nobody at the table will mistake it for Mang Tomas, but nobody will complain either. This is also the answer if anyone at the table will not eat liver.

A store-cupboard approximation that gets further than you would expect, because Worcestershire sauce is built on fermented anchovy and gives a savoury depth that stands in for some of the liver. The ketchup supplies sweetness, sourness and body all at once.

Best for

roast pork, fried chicken, when the cupboard is bare, children who will not eat liver

Whisk cold, or warm gently for 2 minutes to marry the flavours. Add a pinch of black pepper. It tastes tomatoey, which lechon sauce does not, and the finish is fruitier and less mineral. Banana ketchup, if you have it, is closer to the Filipino flavour than tomato ketchup. Add half a teaspoon more vinegar than feels right, because ketchup is sweeter than lechon sauce and roast pork needs the acid.

The texture match is excellent: hoisin is dark, thick, sweet and salty, and it clings to a piece of pork exactly the way lechon sauce is supposed to. If what you mainly miss is a sweet dark sauce with body, this is the quickest route to it.

Best for

roast pork, crispy pork belly, grilled meats, dipping

Whisk together cold. Add a crushed garlic clove and let it sit 10 minutes. Five-spice and fermented soybean make it taste unmistakably Chinese, with an anise note lechon sauce does not have, so the plate reads as char siu rather than lechon. It is also considerably sweeter, which is why the vinegar is essential. No liver depth at all.

The least-bad option and a serviceable one for a family meal. It does the sweet-and-sour half of lechon sauce's job faithfully and has the right glossy clinging body, which is more than half the experience of eating it.

Best for

roast pork, fried chicken, lechon kawali for children, when nothing else is available

Stir the vinegar into the sauce and add a pinch of salt and pepper. It tastes like a fruit sauce with roast pork, because that is what it is: no liver, no garlic, no savoury mineral depth, and a distinctly fruity sweetness. The extra vinegar is what keeps it from being cloying next to fatty pork. Drain any pineapple pieces out of a sweet-and-sour sauce first.