Dusun Specialty · Smoked Wild Boar

Sinalau Bakas

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The name literally describes the method: in the Dusun language 'sinalau' means smoked and 'bakas' means wild boar, and the meat is cured beside the fire for hours rather than grilled directly over it, until it can keep for days without refrigeration.

Sinalau bakas is wild boar meat cured and slow-smoked over an open fire until dark and intensely savory, then sliced thin and eaten with rice or worked into a stir-fry. Smoking wild boar this way is a signature dish of Kadazan-Dusun communities across Borneo, and it appears on tables among the Dusun minority concentrated in Brunei's Tutong and Belait districts as well.

Why it's made this way: Smoking meat this way let Dusun hunting households preserve wild boar from the surrounding jungle long before refrigeration reached rural Borneo, and the technique has stayed a marker of Dusun food identity in communities across the island, including in Tutong and Belait.