Chicken Lucban Longganisa Attempt #1

Lucban Longganisa is a popular sausage in the Philippines originating from Lucban, Quezon. It's very small and quite garlicky. It's actually my favorite longganisa of all time.

But since I started cutting down on my pork and beef intake, I've been replacing them with chicken in recipes I cook. Today I attempted to do the same with Lucban Longganisa.

I found a recipe online and went about preparing it. One of the things I decided to take out was of course, the pork back fat, which are the white little cubes that you can find in the pork version. For a long time I was kind of put off by so much fat in the longganisa because it seemed so unhealthy. So out it went.

I also took out the casings, which is composed of pork intestines. I also didn't want to use artificial casings so i just decided to do the longganisa skinless.

Using latex gloves I formed bits of the meat into more or less longgansia shapes. Everything went really well, and I was kind of happy how they turned out, at least visually.

But when the time came to taste it I was like..... wow. I'm not liking this. At all.

It certainly did taste like Lucban Longganisa, but it was dry. Terribly dry. Desert dry. I didn't like how it crumbled in my mouth.

And then it hit me... THE FAT. The pork back fat is what made the pork version delicious. Apparently when you fried the pork back fat, it released oils that kept the sausage moist.

I find it depressing that the one thing that makes my favorite dishes delicious is also horribly unhealthy.

Why are the awesome tasting things in life have to be BAD for you? I don't get it.

It's been suggested by my wife Ilyn that I also need to curb the amount of spice. Chicken probably needs less spice than pork to achieve the same taste. I'm also told that I could replace the pork back fat with chicken skin, which may well also produce the proper amount of oil to keep the sausage moist.

Since there is still a batch of the meat mixture uncooked, I will modify it for another attempt.

But for now, Attempt #1 is a FAIL. I'm not putting the recipe here until I come up with something I'm very happy with.