How do you like your adobo? DTI to set ‘national standards’ for cooking Filipino dishes
The Department of Trade and Industry-Bureau of Philippine Standards (DTI-BPS) has formed a panel that will develop a set of “Philippine National Standards” when it comes to cooking adobo, sinigang, lechon, sisig, and other local dishes.
The newly established committee called "BPS/ITC 92" aims to standardize the cooking techniques for well-known Filipino dishes amid the “variations in cooking techniques observed in all regions of the country.”
The panel will be headed by Via Mare Corporation founder Glenda Barretto, and vice-chaired by Myrna Segismundo of the Food Writers Association of the Philippines, and Raoul Roberto Goco of the Hotel and Restaurant Association of the Philippines.
The committee has started developing standards for cooking adobo as early as May 2021, when they used the cookbook Kulinarya: A Guidebook to Philippine Cuisine as a reference.
According to the committee, creating a benchmark for adobo “will help preserve the country’s cultural identity despite the variations made to it.”
“There will be different approaches and opinions on cooking Philippine adobo. As long as I have, say one to three steps, it’s this recipe. Anything else you add to it is a variation to the cooking technique,” Segismundo said.
The panel will be joined by representatives from the UP Diliman’s College of Home Economics, Philippine Chamber of Food Manufacturers, Inc., Philippine Association of Meat Processors, Inc., and the Department of Science and Technology-Industrial Technology Development Institute, among others.
In a statement on Sunday, July 11, DTI clarified that the proposal to “standardize” local cuisines is a suggestion to have “consultations among chefs and what will be in a traditional [Filipino] recipe especially for international promotions.”
“This is not a mandatory standard because there are thousands or millions of different lutong adobo… the attempt is to define what we will promote internationally and not redefining what adobo is,” DTI added.
