A quarter kilogram of ground meat can feed four people. The secret? Add vegetables and quail eggs. Try this 15-minute ground pork menudo using crumbled longganisa (sausage) and be amazed at the flavor of the dish!

I got the idea for this dish from a popular ulam (main dish) served in Filipino carinderias (eateries). It is basically Filipino menudo except that it is made with ground meat which, in this latest incarnation, was upgraded to crumbled longganisa.

The backstory behind this update. There’s a stall at Suki Market in Dapitan where Speedy buys longganisa regularly. Garlicky, laden withchiliesand just bursting with bold flavors usually associated with Vigan longganisa. None of that icky sweet stuff tinted with red food color that often goes by the name longganisa recado or longganisa hamonado.

We love the spicy and garlicky longganisa so much that I asked Speedy to inquire if we could buy the sausage meat without the casing. No harm in asking, right? And from his next trip to Suki Market, Speedy came home with four kilograms of sausage meat.Oh, fiesta! Alex divided the mass into eight portions and stored them in the freezer in reseable bags. We’ve been cooking the sausage meat in so many new and delicious ways. This is one of them.

So, I was saying this dish iscarinderia-inspired… Incarinderias, the ground pork menudo is usually garnished with hard-boiled chicken eggs which serve as an inexpensive extender. But, you know, the size of the quail eggs seemed to me to be more appropriate for ground meat. A dozen quail eggs for a quarter kilogram of ground meat were just right.

15-minute ground pork menudo and quail eggs rice bowl

If using sausage meat that had already been stuffed into casings, simply slit the casings and press out the filling. Discard the casings.

If you’re wondering why garlic, almost always a must in Filipino cooking, is not listed among the ingredients, that’s because the sausage meat was already laden with a copious amount of garlic. Adding more would have been overkill.

Filipino ground pork menudo and quail eggs rice bowl

Prep: 10

Cook: 15

Total: 25

Servings: 4 people

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Filipino

Label: Ground Pork, One Bowl Meal, Quail Eggs, Rice Bowl, Sausage Meat

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Connie’s notes

Updated from recipes originally published in June 11, 2006, Ocotber 6, 2017 and May 1, 2018.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon cooking oil
250 grams sausage meat see notes after the recipe
¼ cup chopped carrot
¼ cup sweet peas
¼ cup chopped shallots
salt
pepper
3 plump tomatoes chopped
1 pinch dried oregano
12 quail eggs hard-boiled and peeled
cooked rice to serve
sliced scallions to garnish

Instructions

Heat the cooking oil in a frying pan.
Spread the sausage meat in the hot oil. Over high heat, leave for a minute for the underside to brown.
Stir the sausage meat and cook, stirring often, until you see rendered fat in the pan.
Add the chopped carrot and shallots, and sweet peas. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. Continue cooking with occasional stirring for about a minute.
Stir in the chopped tomatoes and oregano. Lower the heat, cover the pan and cook until the carrots are almost and the tomatoes have softened.
Stir in the quail eggs. Cover the pan once more and cook for another minute or two to allow the quail eggs to soak up the flavors of the sausage meat.
Taste your ground pork menudo; add more salt and pepper, if necessary.
Scoop rice into bowl, top with ground pork menudo, making sure everyone gets enough quail eggs, sprinkle with sliced scallions and serve at once.

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