If there is a great cuisine that needs more attention in America, it’s probably Filipino. The food of the Philippines is simple, yet delicious—especially if you love pork! And one of the great dishes, either for everyday cooking or for big celebrations, is crispy pata. Pata can be prepared in several ways, including slowly braised in soy sauce—which we want to try. But this method of boiling and frying to crisp the skin into a crunchy armor coat of chicharron is going to be hard to beat!

This is a recipe that takes some time—it has a chilling step that you need to account for—but is by no means hard to pull off. With our critical temperatures, you’ll be able to make this dish perfectly your first time. And you’ll be making it often after that! Let’s get to it.

What is pata? What cut should I use?

If you don’t have a Filipino butcher near you (we don’t), you’re not going to be able to walk in and ask for pata. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find it. Pata is the pork leg, the portion from the knee down. That may be hard to come by, but you should be able to find the hock—the part from the knee to the ankle—without much trouble. Most good butchers, especially those at ethnic markets, will have them on hand. We got ours from a local carnicería. The dish is still excellent, and not unauthentic, with just the hock.

And speaking of authenticity, there are as many ways to make this as there are people making it. Everyone has their own lore about when to rub the meat with what, how long to boil, in what way to fry, and how to season it all along the way. There is no one authentic recipe, and we don’t pretend to be it. But we have looked at a lot of recipes and taken the best bits from each to bring them together for you here. And the results are delicious.

Pork pata thermal challenges

Being the lower leg of the pig, the pata is very well used. And as you probably know, well-used muscles are high in connective tissues, especially collagen. That collagen must be broken down and rendered into gelatin. But beyond the meat itself, we also need to render the connective tissues in the skin of the pork hock so that it can cook up during the frying step to make bubbly, crisp pork rind. For the whole dish to come together, we’ll use the wet, direct heat of boiling to tenderize (and flavor) the meat, then refrigerate it and deep fry it to rewarm it and crisp the skin. Those two steps are where our critical temperatures come into play.

Pork pata boiling time and internal temperature

To make sure that the meat and skin tenderize enough, you need to boil the hock until a good deal of the internal collagen breaks down. Put the meat in the pot with the boiling liquid (more on that liquid later) and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer gently until the internal temperature of the hock reaches at least 185°F (85°C). This will take about 60–90 minutes, depending on the size of your pork hock.

Can we talk about that temperature for a second here? Why that temperature? Well, collagen dissolution doesn’t really get going until about 170°F (77°C). By the time we get to 185°F (85°C) there has been enough collagen/gelatin transformation to make the meat pleasantly tender. This is very much like the temperatures needed in making sliced pork shoulder: it’s tender, but not shredding to the touch. You can cook it further, of course, if you want something even more supple and soft, but as the modus for serving seems to usually be chopping the meat, having it cook until “finger tender” isn’t necessary.

On using thermometers for boiling pata

“But … cooking to temp isn’t authentic.” Ok. That’s not wrong. And if you have a Lola 2 who’s been teaching you to make this dish since you were a kid, you might not need a thermometer. But if this is a new dish to you, or if you weren’t paying attention to those lessons from your grandmother, a thermometer is going to be a huge help. We used our ChefAlarm^® with the optional waterproof needle probe to track the temperature throughout the boiling process and set the high-temp alarm for 185°F (85°C). It took just over two hours to get there. Once we hit our target temp we took the pata out of the pot, just over two hours after we started boiling it. If you don’t want to use the waterproof probe to monitor the cook, you can check it from time to time, starting about 90 minutes in, with your Thermapen^® ONE.

Deep frying pata: oil temperature

If you want to submerge the pata to fry it and crisp the skin, you’re going to need a big pot and a lot of oil. A better way is to put the pata in a large dutch oven and add oil until it comes just past halfway up the pata. Then remove the pata and start to heat the oil, adding it again once it has come up to temperature—350°F (177°C). Use your ChefAlarm here once again. though this time you won’t need the waterproof needle probe, just the included probe and the pot clip. Set your high-temp alarm for 350°F (177°C) and heat the oil. Adjust the heat as you cook to try to stay as close to that target temperature as you can.

Deep frying is inherently dangerous; let’s just say that up front. This is no different. When you put the pork in the frying oil, any pockets of gelatinized water will heat quickly and expand—explode, in fact. It’s best to add the pork to the pot with the heat turned off, and quickly put a lid most of the way on the pot to avoid catastrophic splatters. Once the initial oil-anger wears off, you can remove the lid.

Pork hocks have one side with a lot of skin and one side with just a little. If the lots-of-skin side is facing down in the pot, the weight of the hock will make it hard for the bubbles on the skin to form. So cook it for a few minutes with that side facing down, then turn it over (it will get angry again, just put the lid on until it stops popping) and baste the hock with a ladle, bathing the skin in hot oil over and over. You can flip it back and forth in the pot, turning it so both sides swim in the oil more fully, every few minutes. When the skin is well crisped and the meat is warmed inside (use a Thermapen ONE to check that), after about 15 minutes, remove the pata from the oil and let it drain before pulling the bones out and chopping it up to serve.

On seasoning crispy pork pata

Pata is a fairly large piece of meat, so seasoning it well can be hard. One of the best things you can do is to boil it in a flavorful liquid. We used vinegar (sugarcane vinegar, if you can get it), bay leaf, salt, black pepper, onion, and garlic—traditional Filipino flavors. While this may not have gotten to the heart of the meat while cooking, it certainly flavored the outside of it well so that it all tasted great when chopped together.

After boiling we rubbed some kosher salt into the skin and put it in the fridge to brine overnight. By adding flavor during the boil and salting it overnight, we ended up with an amazingly flavorful pata on its own.

But we also served it with a traditional vinegar sauce—vinegar, soy sauce, onion, garlic, and chili—that worked wonders when combined with the fatty, rich meat. Don’t skip the sauce!

This is one you need to try. It’s not hard, the meat is usually quite cheap, and the payoff is worth easily four times the work. Make it for neighbors, for family, for yourself, for leftovers for sandwiches—it’s amazing for any gathering. Give it a try this weekend, using your thermometer to ensure first-time success. We hope you love it. Happy cooking!