dinardaraan, dry or soupy?

Namaga a dinardaraan a naparabawan iti naparsik a silet.

Dinardaraan or dinuguan or blood stew (also called "chocolate" by some folks, and sapsapuriket [usually when it's chicken dinardaraan]) is a unique Pinoy way of turning pork blood, or any animal--domesticated or wild--blood, be it cow's, carabao's, goat's, chicken's, duck's, dog's and the like, into a kind of delicacy. Although it's not really that exotic or gross, this dinardaraan thing. Except maybe for connoisseurs or gourmands like  celebrity chefs Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern and other foreigners who consider even our dear balut as a bizarre food as if they're not relishing escargot or find extreme delight devouring canned rattlesnake on their sandwich. Or, on blood matters, perhaps they're not aware of blood sausages a.k.a black/blood pudding beloved by the Europeans.

And dinardaraan, is prepared/cooked and served in a variety of ways. With Ilokanos, most prefer the dry one, the blood a kind of paste, with its meat and/or offals deep fried into crackling crunchy bits, like these two dinardaraan varieties in Tuguegarao City:

And this one from Ilocos Norte (Laoag City), served with the fried pork intestines/tripe put atop the cooked blood:

And then, later the fried intestine is mixed up with the blood:

Some Ilokanos prefer a slightly dry dinardaraan, with a little thick broth for the rice:

And this is a soupy dinardaraan, also preferred when one is fond of kaldo. The broth is great with sili ti sairo and suka ti basi for a hot dinardaraan soup:

When I cook dinardaraan, I have two options, dry and soupy, for I love my rice with blood soup:

How about you, how do you like your chocolate?

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