How to Cook the Best Tinolang Palaka (Frogs)

Tinola dish is one of the most popular stew dishes in the Philippines cuisines. The dish served as the main dish or as an appetizer. It is a dish that is closely similar to other dishes such as Ginataang manok and Binakol. 

It could use different proteins to substitute for a chicken like fish, pork, seafood, and frog's meat. 

Frog's meat is a type of meat considered as chicken-like meat. It tastes like chicken and is soft as chicken meat when you cook it. 

Many people get confused because when the cooked in the frog's meat is perfect and served, you would mistake it for chicken meat. 

Are you wondering now about the dish? Why don't you keep reading this until you find out how to cook the best Tinolang Palaka recipes. 

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What is Best Tinolang Palaka

Our menu is an exotic dish in the Philippines. It is a dish composed of frog legs, papaya or sayote, garlic, onion, chili leaves or malunggay leaves, and ginger. 

Frog has two kinds, the edible and the non-edible one. The edible frog is that you would find in the rice field, also known as the "Palakang Bukid." Another one is the larger type called Taiwanese frog or Chinese edible frog but commonly known in the Philippines as Bullfrog. 

The featured dish cooking starts in sauteing all the ingredients, including the frog legs. After sauteing, you could finally add the chicken broth and start simmering and boiling it along with the vegetables you include, whether papaya or sayote or even pechay, spinach, or cabbage. You could also put lemongrass to add more flavor to the dish. 

It is a simple and exotic dish. Filipinos are proud to serve this kind of dish in every season and occasion because of its delicate, rich, and aromatic taste of the featured dish. 

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Ways to cook

Soft meat like frog meat is easier to cook than other meat. Thus, here are the two particular cooking techniques that are perfect for applying with the featured dish. 

Stovetop

This cooking method requires you to put the casserole or pot above the burner and set it in medium-heat to perfectly cook the dish. This dish requires sauteing. Therefore, this method is the perfect way to cook it. 

One more thing about cooking the dish on a stove is that you have access to check it from time to time because the frog's meat is very soft and easy to cook. That is why this cooking technique is the perfect option to cook a dish like this recipe. 

Instant pot

The frog's meat is softer than pork or chicken meat, so cooking it in an instant pot is much better. Instant pot cooking is easier than any other cooking method. You have to use a multi-cooker to set that equipment to the kind of cooking style you want. 

In the case of this dish, the instant pot method is the perfect choice for cooking it. You would set the cooking time of it, mix all the ingredients after you saute it. Then, it would cook a frog dish depending upon your desired cook. 

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Other Delicious Variants of Frogs Recipes 

This exotic dish has some varieties of versions. It would make that unique dish an elevated and tastier dish. Hence, we researched some of the features' perfect variation to help you cook this dish. 

Spicy Tinolang Palaka Recipes

An original version is elevating to a spicy dish. This version's way of cooking and ingredients are far no beyond the classic one. 

The ingredients are frog-leg, onion, garlic, chili leaves, chicken stock, and salt or fish sauce. But in this version, you have to add labuyo chili in the dish to make it spicier, which makes it elevated. 

You have to saute all the ingredients along with the frog leg. Then, put the chicken broth and season it with salt or fish sauce and monosodium glutamate. Let it boil. Afterward, you could serve it with rice. 

Pampanga Style

Another variation of this unique dish is this Kapampangan style. Instead of the traditional papaya or sayote, they used Upo or Calabash (bottle gourd) as the dish's vegetable ingredient. They also add tomato as a souring agent of the dish and to add more flavor. 

Pampanga cooking style is somehow unique, and they are perfect for dealing with exotic ingredients like the frog. They could turn it into something nice and delicious. The sauteing and boiling process of this version is similar to the traditional way. The difference only is some of the ingredients are not the same. 

With spinach Recipes

This version of the featured dish, with spinach, has no difference from the original version. You have to add spinach to the dish to make it more healthy and add more flavors. 

Spinach has many nutrients, including iron, calcium, and Vitamin K. It is an edible plant used in varieties of ways in cooking. This vegetable is usually and commonly served raw because it is much healthier when eaten raw. 

Adding it to the Frog leg tinola is much better to add when the dish is already and perfectly cooked. It also adds an aroma and a great appearance because it has a green color. 

With Pechay

There is another version of our menu, and this version added pechay to the dish. When you're cooking a dish like this frog legs stew cooked in the tinola, which does not have a great source of flavors and is a bit plain, you could add another vegetable to it as long as it would not overpower the dish. 

Pechay, or also called bok choy, is a Chinese version of cabbage. It is a vegetable used in a variety of ways, including stir-frying, sauteing, and boiling. In the Philippines, this vegetable is commonly and widely used in many dishes, including Pork Nilaga, Ginisang Pechay, Pesang Isda, and many more. 

With Tanglad (Lemongrass)

The last and final version of our menu is Tanglad (Lemongrass). An exotic ingredient like a frog leg needs to simmer more in turmeric to eliminate the somehow unpleasant taste. But many said that the frog leg tastes like chicken. However, adding tanglad to the stew dish makes it tastier and eliminates the exotic food's slimy flavor. 

Tanglad or LemongrassLemongrass is a citronella grass used for many culinary purposes to add more flavors to it. Some used it as a flavoring agent, some used it as an aromatic agent, and many used it to help the dish eliminate the slimy taste. This ingredient is perfect to use in exotic dishes like the featured dish. 

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Trivia

Frog legs are one of the famous ingredients used mostly in Chinese and French cuisine. 

The leg part of the edible frog is also highly consumed in different parts of the world, including Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Slovenia, Northern Italy, Spain, Alejento region of Portugal, South Africa, Northwestern Greece and Southern regions of the United States of America. 

Did you know that every year about 40 million USD worth of frog legs are internationally imported and traded with many countries in the world? 

The world's highly importers of frog leg are Belgium, France, and the United States. In contrast, the largest international exporters are from China and Indonesia. 

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Tips

To prevent you from ruining an amazing exotic dish like our menu, we looked for some ideas you could use to prepare and cook it properly. 

• Clean the frog leg carefully. 
• You could either separate or choose not to cut the frog leg into two. 
• Make sure that all the ingredients you need to make a tinola are available. 
• Add more ginger to the dish when you saute it. 
• Be careful not to overcook the frog's meat because it is very soft. 
• Season it using salt or fish sauce.
• You could use other vegetables as long as it would not overpower the dish. 

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Troubleshooting

If you accidentally make some errors while preparing the dish, we searched for some possible solutions you could do to save your dish. 

• If you overseason with salt or fish sauce the Tinola dish, add more water to it, then taste it. 
• However, if you taste the dish and it is a little bit bland, add more seasonings like salt or fish sauce. 
• If you could not get rid of the frog's meat's slimy taste, add lemongrass and more ginger but ensure that it would not overpower the dish.
• If you add so much chili and the dish becomes too hot and spicy, you could separate the frog's meat to it and restart doing the broth. 

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Best serve with

An exotic food like frog must serve with other great dishes to highlight the dish's taste. Here are some dishes that would surely help the exotic dish to stand out. 

• White Rice- is a dish perfect for soup or stew dishes like our menu. 
• Ginisang Ampalaya- is a vegetable cuisine that is perfect for serving along with the featured exotic dish. 
• Ginisang Baguio Beans- another cuisine that helps the featured dish enhance its flavor and taste. 
• Camaron Rebosado- is a seafood cuisine perfect for our menu. 
• Breaded pork chop- is a pork cuisine that helps our menu incorporate its savory flavor. 
• Tortang talong with Giniling- is also vegetable stuff that is perfect with Frog leg stew because torta dishes are dry.
• Fish Fillet- is a fish cuisine perfect with the stew dish, which complements the flavor of the dish.
• Tortang Alamang- is a torta dish perfect for stew and soup dishes, particularly on our menu.
• Tortang Dilis- is torta stuff that perfectly complements the flavor and taste of the stew. 
• Fried tilapia - is a dish perfect to partner with a stew dish and complement the featured dish's slightly bland flavor. 
• Sweetened Saba banana- is a type of banana dessert that features the sweet flavor of the fruit and is perfect after a meal with the main dish. 
• Maruya Saba banana- is another banana dessert that eliminates the exotic dish's slimy flavor featured in the article.
• Alpahor na Kamote- is a sweet potato dish that is perfect for eating with our menu. 

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Conclusion

Exotic ingredients like frog legs are not a slice of ordinary meat. We usually play and cook in our kitchen. It may be a bit disgusting, especially for those who are not fond of a frog. 

But through this dish, you could explore and discover different types of ingredients, seasonings, spices, and herbs that help you eliminate the slimy flavors of the exotic protein you want to use in cooking. 

Not everyone is familiar with frog stuff. However, we hope that all the details we provided would guide you to prepare this exotic yet delicious and wonderful protein: frog leg. 

This frog-leg tinola is an exotic Filipino dish that incorporates the rich resources of protein, seasonings, and other flavoring agents that the Philippines have. 

Thus, what are you waiting for now? Get all your stuff and start creating an exotic dish that you would be proud to serve with your family and friends! 

For more delicious recipe, visit Eat Like Pinoy!

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