Are you a broke college student with questionable cooking ability? Are you trying your best to cook healthily but often struggle to find short and simple recipes? Are you looking for a Ground Pork Torta recipe? Look no further! I present to you my favorite childhood Filipino dish, Ground Pork Torta! Referred to as Tortang Giniling in Tagalog, it’s a simple Filipino homemade comfort food that is essentially a Ground Pork Omelette, and can be made with various garnishes to suit your preferences.
As a culinary amateur who prefers quantity over quality (derived from both preference and ineptitude), I personally only use the four base ingredients to make the basic Ground Pork Torta. However, since most other cooks are proficient in multi-layered flavorings, I’ve included the other optional ingredients that I usually omit. I personally wouldn’t recommend using all of the optional ingredients at once, as it would become quite the hefty omelette. Instead, use your own discretion and preferences on which ingredients to use. Feel free to try other ingredients and combinations not listed here! Let us know in the comments below if you find something delicious.
Ground Pork Torta
Serves 2-4 people
Best served with 1 cup rice
Cook time 30-45 mins
Base Ingredients:
½ onion
2-3 cloves of garlic
1 lb. ground pork1
6-8 eggs2
Additional Ingredients:
1-2 green onions
½ tomato
½ pepper
½ lb. ham
Directions:
- Prepare a medium-heat pan with vegetable oil and add diced onions and minced garlic, then add salt and pepper
- Additionally, add green onions
- Sauté uncovered until onions are soft, then add ground pork, salt, and pepper
- Additionally add diced ham
- Constantly turnover ground pork with onions until meat is fully cooked (no more visible pink)
- Set aside and let cool
- Beat eggs in a large bowl and add salt
- Once ground pork base has cooled, add entire pan into egg mix to make omelette mixture4
- Additionally add diced tomatoes and/or diced pepper
- If there are a lot of residual oils and liquids in the sauté pan, feel free to drain it before adding (or directly add it, if you want the extra fatty acids)
- Rekindle medium-heat vegetable oil pan and use a ladle to incrementally add omelette mixture to pan5
- Flip when egg edges have a faint crispy golden brown color and the egg is a solid yellow color
- Rinse and repeat until omelette mixture is depleted
Plate and garnish with green onion
And that’s it! Super simple, super delicious, and can serve the whole household. Good for potlucks also. Stores well in the fridge for leftovers. All around a solid dish. I am biased, of course, but it is potentially one of the best dishes in existence.
Footnotes / Housekeeping Notes:
- Unfortunately, I do not know of any suitable vegetarian/vegan/meat substitute options. I haven’t tried it, but maybe Vegan Spam works? If you discover a good one, be sure to let us know in the comments below!
- The more ingredients you use, the more eggs you’ll need. I usually use 6 medium-large-sized eggs for my basic Ground Pork Torta, and even then they’re pretty hefty proportion-wise. Including all additional ingredients may require 8-10 eggs.
- The cooling before adding the ground pork to the egg is to ensure that the excess heat doesn’t prematurely cook the eggs when adding it. If the eggs prematurely cook, it’ll be more difficult to portion the omelettes into the pan properly, and the eggs may cook unevenly / burn.
- If you’re planning on meal-prepping, I would recommend doing it at this step, after adding the ground pork portion to the large bowl. When resuming the cooking process, microwave it to heat it up a little while adding and beating eggs. Again, not too hot, you don’t want to prematurely cook the eggs. 45 seconds? Depends on your microwave.
- The ground pork and foodstuffs should be concentrated towards the middle of each omelette, with the outer edges being relatively clear, so that flipping is easier and self-contained. I can generally snug 2-3 omelettes into each pan to cook simultaneously, albeit it can be a bit crowded.
