When people unfamiliar with Filipino cuisine think of this food, they usually imagine pork egg rolls, adobo and lechon. While these are, undoubtedly, staple Filipino dishes, there's certainly a lot more to this vibrant and comforting cuisine than meets the eye.
Influenced by Malay-Indonesian, Chinese and Spanish cuisines, Filipino dishes vary in taste, shape, color and texture. Additionally, each region and province have their very own local items as well as regional twists on the more typical dishes.
Most, if not all, deserve a hearty sampling, preferably with rice on the side.
And while Filipino cuisine is the next big thing in gastronomy for cities like Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago, it's still best experienced in the Philippines.
Arroz Caldo
Best savored on a cold, rainy day, this hearty, savory rice porridge dish is the Filipino take on congee. It's made with sautéed onion, garlic and ginger-which gives it a comforting aroma-as well as a splash of fish sauce, and chicken broth or bouillon. For protein, chicken pieces are mixed in.
Before serving, it is topped with scallion, fried garlic and half a hard-boiled egg, then seasoned with lime juice and fish sauce. Tell us that isn't the perfect comfort food!
Sizzling Sisig
Sisig was originally a bar snack traditionally made with chopped pork jowls, ears and liver. Today, many restaurants are making sisig with pork or bangus (milkfish) to make it more mainstream and approachable for picky eaters.
This dish originated from Pampanga province and is usually served sizzling on a hot plate with a dash of lime or lemon juice. It boasts different textures and tastes, and works well with a bowl of plain rice on the side. Try the traditional take, if you dare.
Pancit Canton
Pancit Canton-which, simply put, is the Filipinos' version of chow mien-has long been everyone's go-to noodle dish in the Philippines. So much so that there's even an "instant" version of it in every on-the-budget college student's diet.
Colorful and very tasty, this dish is usually seasoned with oyster sauce and served with pork pieces, carrots, onion and cabbage. The fancier version includes Chinese sausage, snow peas, shrimp and fish balls. A drizzle of lime (calamansi) juice before serving simply is a must.
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Sinigang na Baboy
Ever had sour soup? If you haven't, then you're in for a comforting treat with Sinigang na Baboy, a popular soup dish that is best consumed hot, drizzled with fish sauce and paired with fried or plain rice.
The sourness comes from its tamarind base, and its main ingredients include some type of meat-although pork is best- kang kong (water spinach), string beans, tomatoes and banana pepper. Some varieties also include taro.
Much like Arroz Caldo, it's fantastic on a cold or rainy day.
Pancit Palabok
An ever-present dish at Filipino parties and get-togethers, Pancit Palabok is more of an afternoon snack than an actual entrée. It's essentially bihon (glass or cellophane noodles) topped with a thick orange sauce made of flour, ground pork, annatto powder and shrimp stock. The dish is also sprinkled with small shrimp, pork cracklings or chicharonnes, pieces of hard-boiled eggs, and scallions.
Mix everything together with fish sauce and calamansi so that it looks like a plate of radioactive mess (due to its bright orange color), but don't let that fool you. There's a reason this dish is a Filipino favorite.
Lechon Kawali
Filipinos love pork, and many of their dishes are made with it. They also have stand-alone pork dishes like Lechon, Lechon Paksiw and Tocino.
However, a particular favorite-that is unknown to most Westerners-is Lechon Kawali, which is essentially a slab of pork belly, deep-fried skin and all. Think of it as a massive cut of chicaronnes, except with more meat.
It's more of a special kind of dish instead of an every day one, eaten mostly when dining out or on special occasions. Crunchy and very tasty, it's served with a side of lechon gravy, and consumed with fried garlic rice.
Kare-Kare
Stews, especially Spanish inspired ones, are a big thing in Filipino cuisine as they pair well with rice, which Filipinos cannot live without. There's Adobo, Menudo, Afritada, and Bistek to name a few.
Perhaps the most complex is Kare-kare, a peanut sauce, oxtail/pork hock stew. It might be hard to imagine a hearty stew with peanut and peanut butter as its base, but this dish will change your life once you've had it.
Like Pancit Palabok, Annatto gives it its orange color. Vegetables like bok choy, eggplants, and string beans are added for variety.
Ube Jam
Much like Thai, Filipino cuisine is fecund with delicious deserts that you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else. One of the best and hardest to find ones is probably Ube jam or Ube Halaya. The beautifully purple dessert is made from purple yam or ube-boiled and mashed, condensed milk, coconut milk, and evaporated milk.
It's cooked in a pot on the stovetop, is sweet and addicting, and is best when just a little lumpy for texture.
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Halo-Halo
Halo-halo is a truly Filipino dessert; Pretty much everyone grew up eating it, especially during those very hot and humid Philippine summers.
The Tagalog word halo essentially means "to mix," and the aptly named dessert is basically a mixture of several different things: shaved ice, evaporated milk, sweet beans, sago, gulaman, flan, plantains, jackfruit, nata de coco, ube jam, pinipig and ube ice cream. It's basically like Hawaii's shaved ice taken to a whole new heavenly level and the perfect desert to cool down on hot days.
Cassava Cake
This delicious cake is made of grated cassava, condensed milk, evaporated milk, coconut milk, coconut cream, eggs and sugar, baked then broiled.
With so many amazing Filipino desserts out there-binignit or ginataan, puto at kutsinta, bibinka, turon, sago at gulaman, and sapin sapin, to name a few-choosing the third to feature on this list is tricky. However, seeing as cassava is one amazing root crop that's been largely snubbed in the US, it only makes sense to feature it here.
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