Tocino substitutes

This is what tocino actually is, and it is the answer. Per pound of pork sliced about a quarter inch thick: 1/3 cup brown sugar, 2 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp pineapple juice or cane vinegar, 4 cloves minced garlic, 1 tsp salt, ½ tsp black pepper, and ½ tsp annatto powder if you want the familiar red colour.

Best for

tosilog, breakfast with garlic rice and egg, rice bowls, any recipe calling for tocino

Prep

Marinate covered in the fridge 8 to 24 hours. To cook, put the slices in a cold pan with 1/3 cup water, cover, and simmer until the water goes; then fry in the rendered fat until glazed.

Understand what you are making: a sweet marinade, not a cure. It will be brown-pink rather than the bright red of the commercial packs, which get their colour from nitrite and dye. Keep it refrigerated the whole time, cook it within two days or freeze it, and cook it right through. Do not add curing salts on your own initiative; if you want to cure, follow a tested recipe at the printed rate exactly.

The closest ready-made product: sweet, red, garlicky roast pork with a sticky glazed exterior, built on the same idea of sugar caramelising on the surface of the meat. On a plate with garlic rice and a fried egg it reads convincingly.

Best for

tosilog, rice bowls, breakfast plates, fried rice

Prep

Slice thin and warm it in a dry pan until the edges caramelise. If you are using bottled char siu sauce on plain pork, marinate 4 hours first.

Five-spice powder is the difference you will taste: star anise and cinnamon give it a warm liquorice note that Filipino tocino does not have. It is also less sour, since tocino relies on vinegar or pineapple juice for a tang that char siu lacks. A squeeze of calamansi or lime on the plate closes some of that gap.

The fastest supermarket route to a tosilog breakfast. It is already cured pork, already pink, already sliced, and the added sugar gives you the caramelised sticky surface that is the most recognisable thing about tocino.

Best for

tosilog, quick breakfasts, rice and egg plates

Prep

Pat dry, sprinkle with brown sugar, and fry over medium heat until the sugar melts and browns on both sides.

Add no salt at all, because cured ham is already salty and the recipe's salt would make it inedible. It is smokier, leaner and far less garlicky than tocino, and the texture is dense and uniform where tocino is fatty and yielding. Rub a crushed garlic clove over the slices before the sugar and it improves noticeably.

Sweet cured pork with the right sugar-and-fat balance, which is the flavour logic of tocino. If your fridge has this and nothing else, breakfast is solved.

Best for

breakfast with garlic rice, fried rice, rice bowls

Prep

Slice on a steep bias about ¼ inch thick and fry in a dry pan until the fat runs and the edges crisp.

Completely different shape and texture: dry, firm and salami-like rather than soft slices of glazed meat, so it eats as little coins rather than something you cut with a fork. It also carries rice wine and sometimes rose wine, which give it a distinct perfume. Less fat renders out, so your garlic rice will be drier.

Tocino and sweet longganisa sit on the same breakfast plate for a reason: both are sweet, garlicky, caramelising pork. If a Filipino market or freezer aisle has one and not the other, take it without hesitation.

Best for

tosilog and longsilog interchangeably, breakfast plates, fried rice

Prep

Simmer in a covered pan with a little water until it evaporates, then fry in the rendered fat.

It is ground and formed rather than sliced whole muscle, so it eats crumbly and soft instead of giving you a slice with a chewy glazed edge. It is usually more garlicky and sometimes more sour than tocino. On a plate with rice and egg almost nobody would object.

The honest least-bad option, offered because it is what many people actually have at seven in the morning. It gets the salt, the pork fat and the caramelised sugar, which is three of the four things tocino does.

Best for

emergency tosilog, breakfast with rice and egg

Prep

Fry the bacon most of the way, pour off most of the fat, then add the sugar and turn the slices until glazed.

Smoke dominates, and there is no way around it: tocino has no smoke and bacon has a lot. There is also no garlic and no sour note. Rub the raw slices with a cut garlic clove and add a teaspoon of vinegar with the sugar, and it moves surprisingly far in the right direction, but it will still taste like candied bacon rather than tocino.