Differentiating kinilaw from kilawin, Ponseca and Trinidad state that the latter indicates “starting with something cooked, like grilled meats, and tossing them in vinegar.” Thus, unlike kinilaw which technically speaking starts with raw seafood, meat, or vegetables, kilawin may involve cooking said ingredient prior to treating it with acid. For example, the Caviteño dish of the same name is composed of boiled beef tripe and grilled pancreas then “cooked and seasoned with spiced up vinegar,” Polistico describes. Similarly, the Ilocano kilawen kalding starts with “charcoal-broiled goat skin goat’s meat and liver marinated in vinegar or calamansi with ginger, onions, and soy sauce.”
Given the diversity of languages in our archipelago, variations in jargon are all but expected. Nonetheless, these inconsistencies can be confusing. One notable example is toyo and patis, two staple sawsawan in Filipino cuisine that refer to soy sauce and fish sauce in Tagalog—but in many parts of Visayas, its designations are reversed: toyo refers to fish sauce, and patis refers to soy sauce. In the case of kinilaw and kilawin, the definitions are more flexible and create a much larger grey area. The dish known as kinilaw nga nangka, popular in Cebu and Bohol is more like the family of kilawin dishes since the jackfruit is first boiled and simmered before it is washed in coconut vinegar. The Batangueño and Tagalog kilawing baboy complicates the definition even further, as Polistico explains, “This dish is not actually served raw. It so happened that the ingredients used are similar to those used in the conventional kilawin through all are thoroughly cooked here.”
On the whole, the definitions of kinilaw and kilawin may overlap in certain locales. However, kinilaw generally refers to a dish that features a raw ingredient cured in acid, while the featured ingredient in kilawin might be boiled, grilled, or briefly cooked in another preparation before being dressed in citrus or vinegar.
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