Word.ws English Dictionary

balbacua

balbacua noun: a Filipino stew of beef slow-cooked until tender, especially in the cuisine of Visayas and Mindanao.

balbacua: a Filipino stew of beef slow-cooked until tender, especially in the cuisine of Visayas and Mindanao
Image: Ilongga's Kitchen, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

balbacua (uncountable)

  1. (Philippines) A Filipino stew of beef slow-cooked until tender, especially in the cuisine of Visayas and Mindanao.

Forms of balbacua

alternative formbalbacoa
alternative formbalbakoa
alternative formbalbakua
alternative formbalbakwa

Origin of balbacua

Borrowed from Cebuano balbakuwa, from Spanish barbacoa (“slow-cooked meat on an open fire”) (whence also the English doublet barbecue), from Taíno barbakoa (“framework of sticks”), the raised wooden structure the natives used to either sleep on or cure meat. The dish was likely named due to the similarity in the length of time in cooking and the tenderness of the meat. Compare Tagalog balbakwa, English barbacoa.

Questions about balbacua

What does balbacua mean?
Balbacua means a Filipino stew of beef slow-cooked until tender, especially in the cuisine of Visayas and Mindanao.
What part of speech is balbacua?
Balbacua is a noun.

Words near balbacua in the dictionary

  1. Balayong
  2. Balaytigui
  3. Balazeikin
  4. Balazs
  5. Balazses
  6. balbacua
  7. Balbagan
  8. balbal
  9. Balbalan
  10. Balbaldez
  11. balbals

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: balbacua (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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