Start Sour, Not Sorry

The squeeze of lemon at the end is a confession; the sour that goes in first is a design.

2 October 2026

Sinigang begins with the sour. Tamarind pulp goes into the water before the pork belly, before the daikon and the long beans, and the broth spends an hour learning to be acidic. By the time it reaches the table the sharpness isn't a note floating on top — it's the floor everything else stands on, and the fat tastes richer for having something to push against.

The squeeze of lemon at the end is a different gesture entirely: a correction, applied in mild panic to a sauce that went dull. It works, but you can taste the seam. Acid added early breaks down, mellows, turns savory, gets into the meat. Vinegar simmered long enough into adobo stops being vinegar. A lemon squeezed over a finished plate stays a lemon.

So decide at the start. If a dish wants to be sour, make it sour from the first pour and build upward — then there's nothing to fix.