Word.ws English Dictionary

humba

humba noun: a Filipino braised pork dish from the Philippines especially popular in the Visayas, traditionally made with fatty cuts of pork belly slow-cooked until very tender in soy sauce, vinegar, peppercorns, garlic, bay leaves, and fermented black beans (tausi) sweetened with muscovado sugar, and also commonly including hard-boiled eggs and banana blossoms.

Noun

humba (usually uncountable, plural humbas)

  1. (usually) A Filipino braised pork dish from the Philippines especially popular in the Visayas, traditionally made with fatty cuts of pork belly slow-cooked until very tender in soy sauce, vinegar, peppercorns, garlic, bay leaves, and fermented black beans (tausi) sweetened with muscovado sugar, and also commonly including hard-boiled eggs and banana blossoms.
    • A most sought-after “correct” humba has the skin jelly-soft, with the fork-tender meat swimming in its own fat.2014 November, Claude Tayag, Mary Ann Quioc, “Humba: Braised pork”, in Linamnam: Eating One’s Way Around the Philippines, 2nd edition, Mandaluyong: Anvil Publishing, →ISBN, “Central & Eastern...
    • On the a la carte menu are braised pork shank with pineapple-soy sauce, humba and several pansit-based dishes.2020 November 6, Pamela Silvestri, “Taste the Filipino flavor rainbow — right here on S.I.”, in Staten Island Advance, Staten Island, N.Y., →OCLC, page A8, column 3

Examples of humba in a sentence

  • There’s no need to make adobo first to taste a delicious humba!2021 August 6, Roselle Miranda, “Ulam Recipes: How To Transform Pork Adobo Into Humba”, in Yummy.ph, Mandaluyong: Summit Media, archived...
  • Maria Polotan’s Humba / “I learned how to make humba from my mom, who learned it from her mom.2022 November 6, Briony Smith, “Off the menu: Toronto chefs find a new way to feed their clientele with food-delivery app Cookin”, in...
  • Commonly used as a dipping sauce or marinade, it [toyo] enhances various dishes like bistek tagalog and pork humbas.2024 October 30, “10 Must-Try Fermented Foods in the Philippines”, in Newport World Resorts, Newport City, archived from the original on 31...

Forms of humba

pluralhumbas
alternative formhong ma
alternative formhongma

Origin of humba

From Cebuano humba and Tagalog humba, from Hokkien 封肉 (hong-bah, “braised (pork) meat”).

Questions about humba

What does humba mean?
Humba means a Filipino braised pork dish from the Philippines especially popular in the Visayas, traditionally made with fatty cuts of pork belly slow-cooked until very tender in soy sauce, vinegar, peppercorns, garlic, bay leaves, and fermented black beans (tausi) sweetened with muscovado sugar, and also commonly including hard-boiled eggs and banana blossoms.
How do you use humba in a sentence?
There’s no need to make adobo first to taste a delicious humba!
What part of speech is humba?
Humba is a noun.
What is the plural of humba?
The plural of humba is humbas.

Words near humba in the dictionary

  1. Humashim
  2. humate
  3. humates
  4. humation
  5. humations
  6. humba
  7. Humbard
  8. humbas
  9. Humber
  10. Humber Arm South
  11. Humbermouth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: humba (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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Cite this entry: “humba.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/humba. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.