Pata tim facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Pata tim

Alternative names	patatim
Course	Main dish
Place of origin	Philippines
Serving temperature	hot, warm
Main ingredients	pork hock, soy sauce, garlic, bay leaves, black peppercorns, muscovado, star anise, mushrooms
Similar dishes	paksiw na pata, humba, hamonado

Pata tim, also called patatim, is a yummy Filipino dish. It's made from pork hock (the lower part of a pig's leg) that is slow-cooked until it's super tender. The pork is braised in a flavorful sauce with soy sauce, black peppercorns, garlic, bay leaves, and star anise. It gets a little sweetness from muscovado sugar.

This dish often includes veggies like péchay (a type of Chinese cabbage) and mushrooms. You'll often find Pata tim served in parts of the Philippines where many Chinese Filipino people live, especially in the Binondo area of Manila.

Where Pata Tim Comes From

Pata tim is a dish that came from Chinese cooking. It's similar to a Chinese dish called red braised pork. It's also related to another Filipino dish called humbà. Pata tim is actually closer to the original Chinese recipe than humbà is. Sometimes, it even uses Chinese rice wine and other Chinese spices.

However, Pata tim is also cooked in a way that's similar to the Filipino dish paksiw na pata. The main difference is that Pata tim doesn't use vinegar, or it uses only a tiny bit. Just like humbà, Pata tim can also have common Filipino ingredients added to it. These can include pineapples, banana flowers, saba bananas, and patis (fish sauce).

The name Pata tim has an interesting origin. The word "pata" comes from the Spanish word for "paw," "foot," or "leg." The word "tim" comes from the Hokkien Chinese language, meaning "to braise" or "to stew." So, when you put them together, Pata tim literally means "braised pork hock." This shows its roots in Chinese cooking.

How Pata Tim is Made

The main part of Pata tim is the pata, which is the pork hock or pig's trotters. Usually, the hock is cooked whole and not cut into smaller pieces, unlike in the humbà dish. Sometimes, the pork hock is soaked in salty water (called brine) overnight to make it even more flavorful.

To cook it, the hock is first quickly browned in oil in a large pan with some mushrooms. This gives it a nice color. After browning, the hock is set aside. Then, the other ingredients are added to a large pot of water. These include soy sauce, muscovado sugar (or brown sugar), garlic, black peppercorns, star anise, and bay leaves. This mixture is brought to a boil.

Once the liquid is boiling, the pork hock is added and boiled for a few minutes. After that, the heat is turned down low, and the pot is left to simmer for several hours. This slow cooking makes the meat incredibly tender. If you want to cook it faster, a pressure cooker can be used. The mushrooms and péchay (which are usually quickly boiled first, a process called blanching) are added near the end of the cooking time. Pata tim is usually served with plain white rice.

You can change Pata tim in many ways. Some recipes add other Chinese spices and sauces like sesame oil, Chinese rice wine, hoisin sauce, five spice powder, or cinnamon bark. But it can also use Filipino sauces like patis (fish sauce). Other ingredients that can be added include lettuce, green beans, shallots, sugarcane, banana flowers, saba bananas, and pineapples. The sauce naturally becomes thick because of the gelatin from the pork hock. However, some recipes add cornstarch to make the sauce even thicker.

Images for kids

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  Pata tim with puto and green beans from Pampanga