Sorpotelसोरपोतेल
⏱ Prep 30m🍳 Cook 65m🍽 Serves 6🌿 Non-veg
Video: CHEF KHABIR MORAES (YouTube)
Sorpotel is Goa's most celebrated festival dish — a fiery, deeply spiced pork stew slow-cooked with liver and heart in vinegar and dried chillies until the flavours meld into something extraordinary. It graces every Goan Catholic table at Christmas and Easter, and old-timers will tell you it always tastes better on the second day after the spices have had time to settle in and the tang of the vinegar has mellowed into the meat.
📍 Make it in Plano
This recipe is the same everywhere — but where you buy the ingredients and eat the dish is local to you.
Finding Desi spots near Plano…
Ingredients
- ▪pork shoulder, bone-in or boneless — डुकराचे मांस600g
- ▪pork liver — यकृत250g
- ▪pork heart (optional, but traditional)150g
- For the masala paste
- ▪Kashmiri dry red chillies (deseeded for medium heat)14
- ▪Goa toddy vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)1/3 cup + 2 tbsp
- ▪garlic cloves — लसूण8 cloves
- ▪fresh ginger — आलं1.5 inch piece
- ▪black peppercorns — काळी मिरी1 tsp
- ▪cumin seeds — जिरे (jeera)1 tsp
- ▪cloves — लवंग (laung)6
- ▪cinnamon stick — दालचिनी (dalchini)1 inch
- For the stew
- ▪onions, finely sliced2 large
- ▪tamarind paste — चिंच (chinch)1 tbsp
- ▪vegetable or coconut oil3 tbsp
- ▪salt, to taste
🌍 Cooking abroad? Substitutions
- Goa toddy vinegar is made from fermented cashew or palm sap and has a distinctive mild tang — in North America or the UK, mix apple cider vinegar and white wine vinegar in a 2:1 ratio for a close approximation.
- Kashmiri chillies give the deep brick-red colour with moderate heat. Find them at any Indian grocery store; if unavailable, use 8 ancho chillies for colour plus 1 teaspoon cayenne for heat.
- Pork liver and heart are the soul of traditional sorpotel. If offal is hard to source, use all pork shoulder — the dish loses some of its complex, earthy depth but is still a worthy Goan table centrepiece.
Method
- 1Boil pork shoulder in salted water for 20 minutes until half-cooked. Add liver and heart in the last 8 minutes — they cook much faster. Drain, cool, then cut all meat into 1-inch cubes. Reserve one cup of the cooking stock.
- 2Dry-roast the Kashmiri chillies in a heavy pan over medium heat for 1–2 minutes until fragrant but not burnt. Soak in warm water for 15 minutes, then drain.
- 3Blend the soaked chillies, garlic, ginger, peppercorns, cumin, cloves, and cinnamon with half the vinegar into a smooth, fiery paste.
- 4Heat oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Sear the diced pork pieces in batches until browned on all sides. Remove and set aside.
- 5In the same pot, sauté the sliced onions over medium-low heat for 12–15 minutes until deeply golden. Add the masala paste and cook for 6–8 minutes, stirring constantly, until the oil separates and the mixture smells toasted.
- 6Return all the seared meat to the pot. Add the remaining vinegar, tamarind paste, reserved stock, and salt. Stir well so the meat is coated in the masala.
- 7Cover and simmer on low heat for 45–55 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the pork is completely tender and the gravy is thick, dark, and coating. Taste and adjust salt and vinegar balance.
- 8Remove from heat and rest for at least one hour before serving. Sorpotel improves dramatically overnight — the vinegar mellows, the spices deepen, and the fat distributes evenly. Serve with Goan pão (bread rolls) or steamed rice.
A Desi.Net original recipe · part of our Indian Cuisine library. Confirm details and adjust to taste.