When in Ilocos, do as the Ilocanos do, which, for the most part means eating heavily. At any given time of the day, Ilocanos are likely to be nibbling at a snack or heaving feast.
Sometimes, if a visitor is lucky, he or she gets invited to a “padaya”, a generic term for a festive party where celebrants pull out all stops and serve Ilocano food in all its abundance and glory. Among the most popular dishes are “pinapaitan” and “pinakbet”. There are also empanada, longganisa and bagnet.
But today, I’d like to feature a more underrated and probably not everyone’s favorite noodle dish, the Hi-bol.
Please, don’t cringe. I’m here to explain this.
According to different recipe sites, Hi-Bol (Ilocano Beef Mami) is a paksiw miki noodle soup or native beef tripe soup, with beef innards soured with Ilocos cane vinegar and mildly flavored with extracted juice from a cow’s chyme-
Curious what cow’s chyme is? It is the pulpy acidic fluid which passes from the stomach to the small intestine, consisting of gastric juices and partly digested food), a sort of ‘papaitan’ with pre-poop as flavoring.
Sounds like the worst stoner food ever? Are you still with me?
Good.
If you need a ‘kinda’ close comparison. It is almost like mami or batchoy but the taste is different than batchoy. The soup looks greenish in color because of the mentioned ingredient papaitan. It tastes so so good, and much even better if you add the sukang Ilocos and red chilis to make the soup hot and spicy.
Of course, originated from Ilocos! Waiving the flag here!
Many would say Hi-bol was born sometime in the 80s.
The name hi-bol is coined from the word “high-voltage”. It means extremely good when used in reference to moods in food. But why hi-bol and not hi-vol?