Filipino barbecue

Filipino barbecue is based on a widespread marinade of banana ketchup, calamansi juice, lemon-lime soda (classically 7-Up), and soy sauce. According to Filipino food historian Ige Ramos , the carbonation from the soda is colloquially intended to tenderize tough cuts of meat. The marinated brochettes are skewered and grilled, typically over a charcoal grill moderated with a pamaypay hand fan, with the marinade re-applied during cooking to caramelize.

Filipino barbecue skewers are typically served with atchara, an unripe papaya pickle, along with a vinegar-based sawsawan for dipping. Filipino barbecue is eaten both as a merienda light meal, and as an ulam, or the main component of a Filipino-cuisine meal with rice.

Street food

Filipino barbecue is endemic to street food of the Philippines. Food booths specializing in Filipino barbecue (Tagalog: barbecuhan) offer large communal pots of sawsawan to dunk skewers. Carinderias, a variety of Filipino eatery, also serve Filipino barbecue skewers alongside other varieties of inihaw grilled dishes and street foods.

Filipino barbecue developed in the 1950s in Metropolitan Manila; according to Filipino chef Jordy Navarra, the style is couched in the charcoal-grilling of rural inihaw. The development of the grilling style may come from the influence of the United States colonization of the Philippines from 1898 to 1946, through which soda, ketchup and American barbecue were introduced in the 1930s. Filipino food historian Ige Ramos opines that the precursor to the standard marinade of Filipino barbecue was created by combining imported American foods, to cherish and maximize their perceived value. During World War II in the Philippines, banana ketchup was invented as an ersatz good that defined the nascent Filipino barbecue marinade after the war.

Chicken and pork prime cuts along with grilled squid (inihaw na pusit) were the skewers of choice from the 1950s until the 1969 Philippine balance of payments crisis. The continued economic hardships in the Philippines of the 1970s during the Marcos dictatorship drove increasingly impoverished Filipinos to eat cheaper offal cuts as poverty food. By the early 1990s, Filipino barbecue with its modern offal skewers had become entrenched as a street food, sold during the day on streets in both urban and suburban contexts, as well as at night markets alongside ukay-ukay stalls. The slang terms for various offal skewers were largely established by this time; Filipino food historian Doreen Fernandez opined that the humorous, euphemistic names were an expression of how offal barbecue skewers were seen as a 'lesser' snack - a pantawid-gutom - as opposed to a primal cut skewer, which could constitute an ulam main meal-portion.