Longganisa substitute

Best substitute

Ground Pork, Seasoned as Skinless Longganisa

Use 1 lb ground pork for every 1 lb longganisa

Best for longsilog

Close match

Before you pick a substitute, work out which longganisa your recipe means, because the two kinds need opposite swaps. Sweet Pampanga or hamonado style is sugary, garlicky and red: swap in Chinese sausage (lap cheong), sliced thin and fried. Sour Vigan style is garlic and vinegar with no sugar: swap in fresh Mexican chorizo. Better than either, though, is to season a pound of ground pork yourself with garlic, brown sugar, soy and vinegar, chill it a few hours and fry it as patties, which is exactly how skinless longganisa is made anyway.

Other longganisa substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Chinese Sausage (Lap Cheong)
Different texture
Use the same amount by weight
The best ready-made swap for sweet, Pampanga-style or hamonado longganisa.
What changes
It is sweet cured pork with a strong garlic and rice-wine background, and when it fries it leaves the same sweet-savoury fat in the pan that makes longganisa rice so good.
Best for
sweet longganisa recipes, longsilog, fried rice, pancit, arroz caldo
Prep. Slice on a steep bias about 1/4 inch thick and fry in a dry pan over medium heat until the edges curl and the fat runs.
It is dry-cured, so it is much firmer and chewier than fresh longganisa and it will never give you that soft yielding bite. There is also less fat to render, so garlic rice cooked in the drippings is drier. Nothing sour about it at all, so it is wrong for a Vigan recipe.
3Fresh Mexican Chorizo
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
The right pick for garlicky, sour Vigan-style longganisa.
What changes
Fresh chorizo is soft uncured pork with a lot of garlic and a lot of vinegar, which is the exact flavour axis Vigan longganisa lives on, and it fries down to the same loose crumbles.
Best for
Vigan longganisa recipes, fried rice, breakfast hash, omelettes
Prep. Squeeze it out of the casing and fry it loose, breaking it up, or shape it into patties.
It is much redder and much spicier, with chilli and often cumin and oregano that Filipino longganisa does not have, so the dish tastes noticeably Mexican. To pull it back, mix it half-and-half with plain ground pork and add an extra tablespoon of vinegar and two cloves of garlic. It also renders a lot of red-tinted fat, which will stain your garlic rice orange.
4Sweet Italian Sausage
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
The plainest fresh pork sausage most supermarkets carry, which makes it a good blank canvas.
What changes
On its own it is nothing like longganisa, but it is soft uncured pork with the right fat content, so once you add the garlic, sugar and vinegar it gets close.
Best for
longsilog, fried rice, breakfast patties
Prep. Remove the casings, then knead in 3 minced garlic cloves, 1 tbsp brown sugar and 1 tbsp vinegar per pound before frying.
Almost all sweet Italian sausage contains fennel seed, which is the one flavour you cannot season your way out of; it gives the finished dish a faint liquorice note that reads as wrong. If the label mentions fennel or anise, pick plain breakfast sausage instead, which is milder and easier to redirect.
5Kielbasa
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight
A useful shelf-stable stand-in when you want something garlicky and porky with no preparation at all.
What changes
Kielbasa is genuinely garlic-forward, which is the one thing it shares with longganisa, and it browns beautifully alongside garlic rice.
Best for
breakfast with rice and egg, fried rice, pancit
Prep. Slice into coins and brown hard in a dry pan so the surface caramelises.
It is smoked and fully cooked, so it tastes smoky rather than fresh, and there is no sweetness and no sourness at all. The texture is fine and springy where longganisa is coarse and crumbly. Add a teaspoon of brown sugar to the pan in the last minute if you are aiming at the sweet style.
6Spanish Chorizo (Dry-Cured)
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight
Included so you know it is the wrong tool.
What changes
Despite the shared name it is a hard dry-cured salami flavoured with smoked pimenton, nothing like a soft fresh Filipino sausage. Use it only if it is what you have and you mainly want its fat for the garlic rice.
Best for
flavouring garlic rice, paella-style rice dishes, when there is nothing else
Prep. Slice very thin and fry gently so the paprika-red fat renders without scorching.
Expect a firm, salami-like chew, a dominant smoked-paprika flavour and no sweetness or sourness whatsoever. The rendered fat is the genuinely valuable part; cook your garlic rice in it and add the slices back at the end. Do not try to season it into longganisa, because cured sausage will not absorb a marinade.

What is Longganisa?

Longganisa is a family of fresh, heavily garlicked Filipino pork sausages, made either sweet and reddish in the Pampanga style or sour and pungent in the Vigan style, and fried for breakfast with garlic rice and a fried egg.

Cooking tips

The classic way to cook longganisa is not straight frying. Put the sausages in a pan with about half a cup of water, cover, and simmer until the water has boiled away, then let them fry in their own rendered fat. Any fresh substitute benefits from the same treatment: the water cooks the inside through before the sugary outside can burn.
Sweet longganisa burns easily and that is the sugar, not your pan. Keep the heat at medium and turn often. If your substitute is unsweetened and you are adding brown sugar, add it in the last two minutes rather than at the start.
Do not pour away the drippings. Longsilog is longganisa, sinangag (garlic rice) and a fried egg, and the garlic rice is meant to be fried in the sausage fat. Whatever you substitute, cook the rice in the fat that comes out of it, with plenty of fried garlic.
If you are making your own from ground pork, the vinegar is doing real work beyond flavour: it firms the texture and keeps the sweet version from tasting cloying. Do not leave it out even in the Pampanga style.
Homemade skinless longganisa is a fresh sausage. Refrigerate it while it marinates, cook it within two days or freeze it in portions, and cook it all the way through. It is not cured and cannot be treated like something that keeps at room temperature.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best substitute for longganisa?

It depends on which longganisa. For sweet Pampanga or hamonado style, Chinese sausage (lap cheong) is the closest thing you can buy, sliced thin and fried. For sour, garlicky Vigan style, fresh Mexican chorizo is much closer. Best of all is to season a pound of ground pork with garlic, brown sugar, soy sauce and vinegar, chill it overnight and fry it as patties, which is exactly what skinless longganisa is.

What is the difference between sweet and Vigan longganisa?

Sweet longganisa, associated with Pampanga and often labelled hamonado, is loaded with sugar and garlic and comes out sticky, caramelised and reddish. Vigan or de recado longganisa has almost no sugar and leans hard on garlic, vinegar, salt and pepper, so it tastes sharp and pungent. This is the single most important thing to establish before substituting, because a swap that works for one is actively wrong for the other.

Can I use Spanish chorizo instead of longganisa?

Not really. Spanish chorizo is a hard dry-cured sausage dominated by smoked paprika, and longganisa is a soft fresh sausage dominated by garlic. Sliced thin and fried, Spanish chorizo will flavour your garlic rice nicely with its rendered fat, but the sausage itself tastes and chews like salami. Fresh Mexican chorizo, which is soft, garlicky and vinegary, is a far better match despite the shared name.

Can I just leave the longganisa out?

In a mixed dish like pancit or fried rice, yes, though you will lose the sweet-savoury fat that carries a lot of the flavour, so add a little extra oil and fry more garlic. In longsilog, no, because the sausage is the entire point of the plate. If you have ground pork, garlic, sugar, soy and vinegar you can make a very respectable version in the time it takes to cook the rice.

Do I need curing salt to make longganisa at home?

No. Skinless longganisa is a fresh sausage: you season ground pork, refrigerate it so the flavours penetrate, and fry it through. It is never dried, smoked or held at room temperature, so there is nothing for a cure to protect against. Commercial versions sometimes use nitrite for the pink colour and shelf life, but a home version does not need it and you should not improvise with curing salts. If you want the reddish colour, use a pinch of annatto powder.

Related substitutes

More meat & protein substitutes

Longganisa substitute

Other longganisa substitutes

2Chinese Sausage (Lap Cheong)

3Fresh Mexican Chorizo

4Sweet Italian Sausage

5Kielbasa

6Spanish Chorizo (Dry-Cured)