Breakfasts to Wake Up For

 and giniling are more common iterations of the Filipino omelet, but did you know that you can use fish as well? 

When you’re cooking for a family you’ll often have leftovers, like two or three pieces of fried galunggong (or any other fish) that you served on the side of a vegetable dish, just sitting on your dining table. Or maybe you still have a few pieces left in an ice cream tub, in an almost-forgotten corner of your freezer.

Don’t throw it out. Shred it up, add some eggs, and fry it until it’s nice and crispy. Serve with green onions and chili oil (or crisps) if you like a bit of heat, and we promise this dish will soon become a staple in your kitchen.

Tortang Galunggong

For Serving

Tortang Galunggong (Filipino Fish Omelet)

If you’re stuck with some leftover fish, torta is a quick, easy, and cheap way to use it up. This version uses galunggong, giving it a salty, craveable quality.

French toast does not discriminate. You can make it with 

 is fair game. If you can soak it in custard and fry it in a butter-slicked pan, you can French toast it.

 Absolutely. Ryle's mom makes a rich and simple soak with eggs and three milks: fresh milk, evaporated milk, and condensed milk. Make sure to slice and open up your pandesal—exposing its soft interior will help it hold more custard.

Easy Pandesal French Toast

Transform your stale, leftover pandesal into French toast with eggs and a three-milk soak. Simple yet rich, and definitely a breakfast to wake up for.

 these maruya pancakes make a delicious compromise. Ripe 

 dipped in batter then cooked in a pan, give these pancakes distinct bites of creamy fruit. To get some of that crisp maruya-esque texture, you want dark pancake edges just shy of burnt. Finish it off with powdered sugar for a sweet breakfast; add a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream if you're 

What's the difference between a fritter and a pancake?

 consists of an ingredient coated (usually dipped) in batter, then deep-fried in hot oil until crispy. The Filipino term 

 refers to fritters. Examples include okoy (also called maruyang hipon) and kwek-kwek.

 on the other hand, is exactly what the name implies: a thin cake cooked in a pan with a bit of fat. Pancakes usually have bigger portions than a fritter. Ingredients, if any, are mixed into the batter, like in Japanese okonomiyaki or Korean pajeon.

These maruya pancakes straddle the line between the two. You dip saba bananas in the batter like a fritter, then cook it in a skillet like a pancake. So is it a fritter or is it a pancake, who knows—all we're sure of is you'll want to make a double batch.

Maruya Pancakes

Saba Maruya (Filipino Banana Fritter) Pancakes

Instead of mashing fruit into the batter, these maruya-inspired pancakes have whole saba bananas tucked in the center.

Got ube halaya sitting in the fridge? If you're not making 

 consider a bowl of ube champorado. Making it is as easy as the classic chocolate version—instead of tablea, ube halaya and ube essence gives this champorado its flavor and color.

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In the late 17th century, galleons brought chocolate to the Philippines along with Mexican 

: a hot chocolate beverage thickened with masa harina, the corn flour used to make tortillas.

And in the absence of masa, locals used malagkit (glutinous rice) in its stead to make 

 a rich chocolate porridge to enjoy for breakfast or on rainy days.

However, it's not as straightforward as dropping halaya into your cooked rice. If you do that, you'll get a barely-purple porridge with just a whisper of flavor.

Enter ube essence, which works like a good push-up bra for ube halaya. Just a teaspoon enhances both the color and flavor, creating a vibrant ube champorado.

Once you have these two ingredients, mix them with evaporated milk in a saucepan. This forms a smooth, milky base that you can easily stir into your cooked rice.

The Rice: Use a Mix of Malagkit and Jasmine

Most champorado recipes use malagkit rice, or 

For the best texture, we took a page from our 

 and used equal parts malagkit and jasmine rice.

When cooked, jasmine rice gets you distinct, fluffy grains with a chewy bite—a nice textural contrast to creamy, 

You'll usually find champorado topped with extra milk and salty fish, like crispy dilis or fried danggit.

 we top our ube champorado with grated processed cheese. You can go the kakanin direction and try toasted coconut, latik (toasted coconut curds), or crunchy pinipig. Then there's the splash of milk for extra creaminess—you can use evaporated or coconut milk.

Ube (Purple Yam) Champorado

Got ube halaya? Ube champorado is just as sweet, creamy, and comforting as your classic chocolate champorado.

 serves a successor that does everything better: an 

 Same sweet-salty combination, but with a crisp, perfectly toasted outside; gooey, melty inside; and overall better filling-to-bread ratio. Stripes of purple ube and pale yellow cheese run through the center—an attractive cross-section that demands a photo.

This recipe is less of a hack, and more of a homemade interpretation to tide you over until your next trip to Baguio. This butter-toasted love letter holds a good swipe of ube spread and three kinds of cheese, which melts into an outrageous, lavalike filling.

 or purchased from a convent. You can never go wrong with 

Any cheese that melts! We use three kinds:

 Engineered to melt while delivering that salty, cheesy flavor you love out of ube cheese pandesal.

 Adds stretch to your filling. Its mild flavor lets ube's sweetness shine.

 A melty cheese with a sharper flavor than mozzarella. The orange variety adds a nice pop of color.

No need to source all three if you only have one or two kinds. A double layer of Eden Singles will already get you a good amount of ooze.

Skip hard cheeses that are more melt-resistant, such as Parmesan or 

. Or if you insist, sneak in a layer as a flavorful add-on. Just don't skip the melty cheese!

Tip: Go low and slow for perfectly golden bread

Toasting your grilled cheese on medium-low sounds like a drag, but patience is key to crusty, evenly browned bread with a perfectly melty center. If your pan is too hot, your risk burning the bread before the heat can properly melt the cheese. And no one wants a grilled cheese with a cold center!

Hatch-Inspired Ube Grilled Cheese

What's better than ube cheese pandesal? The toasty, gooey ube grilled cheese from Hatch Coffee in Baguio.

 consider shredding them instead for these crispy corned beef potato pancakes.

This recipe combines your favorite corned beef with Jewish 

 the pan-fried potato pancakes synonymous with Hanukkah, to form crispy, beef-laced potato patties with French fry-like edges. 

Technically, no. Hash browns are made with just potatoes and salt, sometimes onions (which you can also add to these pancakes!).

These corned beef potato pancakes have the DNA of a latke, and requires more ingredients: an egg and some starch to bind the batter, plus baking powder to give the pancakes a little lift.

Whichever brand you like, whether it's CDO, 

 Purefoods, or Delimondo. What's more important is cooking it dry and rendering out as much fat as you can, which helps keep your pancakes extra crispy. More on that below.

Tips for Perfect Corned Beef Potato Pancakes

Work quickly to prevent potatoes from darkening

Don't keep your potatoes waiting for too long—once shredded, they'll start to oxidize and turn gray.

While it won't change your potatoes' flavor and texture, you can keep them bright and yellow simply by working fast.

Make sure your corned beef’s cooked and the other ingredients have been prepped before you start shredding.

Those shredded potatoes carry a lot of moisture. And excess moisture = soggy, not-crispy pancakes—it's why you want to cook your corned beef dry, too. Squeeze out as much potato liquid you can with a clean kitchen towel or cheesecloth before tossing it into a batter.

Aim for palm-sized potato pancakes the size of a burger patty. Too big, and they risk falling apart while flipping.

A proper shallow fry results in nicely browned potato pancakes, crispy French fry-like edges and all. But if your oil isn’t hot enough, they’ll turn into limp, greasy sponges of fat.

Use a neutral oil with a high smoke point, like vegetable or canola oil, and aim for 350–375°F before frying. Test with a small piece of potato batter—once it hits the oil, it should sizzle and bubble rapidly.

Once your oil is hot, fry the pancakes in small batches. Too many at a time will pull down the temperature!

Corned Beef Potato Pancakes

Make these crispy savory pancakes for breakfast with shredded potatoes and your favorite corned beef.

 garlic fried rice? Give your sinangag four times the garlic flavor with garlic cooked four(!) ways:

Keep a close eye on the garlic while frying and sautéing. Dark, burnt garlic = bitter garlic. You want it pale golden to keep the flavors sweet and mellow.

Now that you have hardcore garlic fried rice, build the perfect silog with fried eggs and your breakfast fare of choice: 

Hardcore Garlic Fried Rice (Sinangag)

Serious about sinangag? This ultimate garlic fried rice has garlic cooked four ways.

Imagine if your tapsilog was crispy, not chewy. This twist on Filipino tapa does just that, with a process closer to 

 than your traditional marinated and air-dried beef: It's battered, fried, and glazed in sauce.

 A light coating of cornstarch with some black pepper—that’s it.

 A shallow-fry in a pool of hot oil, just deep enough to cover the thin strips of tapa.

 The classic tapa marinade of garlic, soy sauce, black pepper, and calamansi juice, reduced until thick, syrupy, and concentrated with flavor.

 when making tapa. This recipe makes use of fatty beef belly, which we've made the case for in our 

 You want it thinly sliced, like beef bacon.

Some groceries sell thinly sliced beef belly in packs for 

 and hotpot. Try to avoid sukiyaki cuts—they can vary wildly in terms of thickness and parts used. Better to buy a slab and ask your butcher to slice it for you, or par-freeze it at home to slice yourself.

Crispy Tapa

Tapa Reduction

Crispy Beef Tapa

Crispy battered beef belly dressed in garlicky tapa reduction just made your breakfast silog more exciting.

When you add a heap of green onions to gingery, chicken-packed 

 form. The ginger-scallion flavor permeates the entire dish, from the flavorful broth to the shredded chicken, all the way to the extra ginger scallion sauce drizzled on top. Everything else is Hainanese chicken-inspired: crispy chicken skin for texture, soy sauce for roundness, and sliced cucumbers for freshness and crunch. Different flavor, same nourishing hug in a bowl.

For a More Flavorful Broth, Use Chicken Bones

After shredding the chicken, add the chicken bones and scraps back into the broth. Add a cup of water at a time and continue simmering, skimming any scum and impurities that arise on the surface.

Want a clear broth? Pour it through a fine mesh strainer before using.

If you have the time, scrape off the extra fat from the chicken skin before frying. You'll get crispier and more brittle chicken skin for it.

Ginger Scallion Sauce

Chicken Broth

Crispy Chicken Skin

Arroz Caldo

Make Ginger Scallion Sauce

Prepare Chicken and Broth

Cook Arroz Caldo

Hainanese Chicken Arroz Caldo

Transform your classic arroz caldo to a Hainanese chicken-flavored porridge by adding green onions.

 may seem bland, if not tasteless. But it makes up for its lack of flavor with a high melting point—kesong puti holds its shape when pan-fried, forming a toasty crust and a soft, oozing interior.

While warm, dress your kesong puti with a honey and flaky salt. This transforms the humble cheese into a lavish sweet-salty snack. It's an approach inspired by Middle Eastern 

 a similar semi-firm, squeaky cheese. Chili flakes and lemon juice add an exciting zip.

Kesong Puti

Kesong Puti and Honey on Toasted Pandesal

Mild-flavored kesong puti becomes a canvas for flavor when pan-fried and dressed in honey, salt, chili flakes, and lemon juice.

This extra-chocolatey champorado does away with the distractions of milk or sugar, relying solely on two kinds of chocolate to deliver flavor. And with less ingredients (just chocolate and rice!), this version becomes simpler to make than your traditional 

A mix of your favorite dark and milk chocolate creates a rich, creamy champorado that's deeply flavored and perfectly sweetened—pure, unadulterated double chocolate in every spoonful.

Filipino champorado has roots in Mexican 

, a hot beverage made with chocolate, sugar, milk, and masa harina, the corn flour used to make tortillas.

The chocolate drink reached Philippine shores in the 17th century through the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade. Since we didn't have masa, locals used malagkit (glutinous rice) instead. The drink eventually evolved into a sweet chocolate porridge to enjoy for breakfast or on rainy days.

Tablea makes a fine bowl of champorado. It's pure unsweetened chocolate, and you can't get any more chocolatey than that. But it's also extremely bitter.

s milk and sugar to balance out the bitter cacao. It's borderline inedible without them. However, you can go overboard and hurt the champorado's flavor and texture. Too much milk will water it down. Too much sugar will stifle the chocolate's bitter, roasted notes.

We wanted to make the most chocolate-centric champorado possible, sticking to just chocolate and rice as much as we can. Was there a way skip the hassle of milk and sugar? What if the milkiness and sweetness came from the chocolate itself?

After a series of chocolate experiments, we found that 

 made a deeply flavored, purely chocolate champorado with the perfect pitch of sweetness.

 with at least 85% cacao brings the bittersweet, mildly tangy notes that we love from tablea.

works as a substitute for sugar and milk. It adds a milky, mellow sweetness with hints of caramel and vanilla, all while adding points to the chocolate flavor as well. A win-win!

Choose a dark and milk chocolate you love—the kind you'd buy an extra bar of to snack on. If you can't find 85% dark chocolate, pick up a bar at the 75–80% range.

Now that you have your chocolate, all you need is glutinous rice and water. Once your rice starts to thicken, chop up the chocolates and stir it in until completely melted. No milk, no sugar. Just creamy, chewy rice in pure melted double chocolate: the ultimate champorado.

Champorado

Double Chocolate Champorado

Instead of tablea, this ultra-rich champorado gets all its flavor from dark and milk chocolate. No additional milk or sugar required.

 Singapore and Malaysia have kaya: a sweet, creamy coconut-egg custard perfumed with 

 leaves. Kopi tiams (coffee shops) slather it between charcoal-grilled bread as kaya toast, with soft-boiled eggs and a cup of kopi waiting on the side.

Kaya is readily available in Singapore and Malaysia, but not so much in the Philippines. Good thing you can make it from scratch in 15 minutes, and it comes out just as great, if not better!

Local coconut jam or coco jam is also called 

In Tagalog, bao (pronounced ba-o, with two syllables) means "coconut shell".

Minatamis na bao has a dark brown color and a syrupy viscosity. You make it by cooking down coconut milk and sugar until it's reduced and caramelized—almost like a coconut dulce de leche. We have a recipe for it 

Kaya has the same ingredients as minatamis na bao, but with the addition of eggs and pandan leaves. These give the spread a custard-like texture and a nutty fragrance from the pandan.

Kaya comes in colors ranging from golden brown to vibrant green. Singapore separates kaya into two types: caramel-colored 

The color you end up with will depend on two things: the sugar you’re using and how you infuse the pandan.

Kaya will pick up the color of the sugar you’re using. 

 gives you a pale base and a clean sweetness that works great for green kaya. 

 like coconut, palm, and muscovado sugar will result in colors between a caramel tan to a chocolate-like brown.

 solid brown bricks of palm sugar similar to our local panutsa. The boiled-down palm sugar takes on a deeper, almost smoky flavor that you won't get from regular sugar.

To keep the ingredients accessible, this kaya recipe uses white sugar with a bit of 

 This combination gives the kaya a golden brown color and a wisp of coconut sugar's caramel-like depth.

Most homemade kaya recipes steep pandan leaves in the coconut mixture. It's what we do in this recipe, too. This is enough to infuse its flavor, but not its green color. You will still end up with sugar-colored kaya.

To get green kaya, you will need to use fresh pandan extract. Blitz chopped pandan leaves with a bit of water in a blender or food processor until you get a mushy green mixture. Strain the pulp—the fragrant green liquid left over is your fresh extract, which you can now use to flavor 

This kaya recipe needs only four ingredients: coconut cream, egg yolks, your sugar of choice, and pandan leaves or extract.

For foolproof smooth and creamy kaya, cook it over a 

 This ensures that you're cooking over gentle heat the entire time. If you cook it straight in the pot, you risk curdling your eggs and forming lumps in your spread.

If you're lazy, you can actually toss all your ingredients in the double boiler for a one-bowl kaya situation. But we suggest whisking the yolks separately, tempering them with hot coconut cream, and adding the mixture at the last step. This makes your kaya extra rich, velvety, and creamy—almost like caramel fudge—ready to glide over toasted bread, cakes, and pastries.

Homemade Kaya (Coconut-Egg Jam)

Make kaya toast for breakfast with this rich, velvety-smooth, pandan-infused coconut jam. It only takes 15 minutes!

, you make adobo flakes. It's how Glenda Barretto, the restauranteur behind 

 invented it in the 70's. She made the toasted flakes for her father, 

 by shredding leftover adobo and frying it until dry.

in Mindanao. Made with meat or fish, the shredded and dried flakes are used as a topping for 

Most home cooks still make adobo flakes when they need to clean out the fridge. But what if you wanted to make adobo flakes 

This recipe makes a simple chicken adobo destined for adobo flakes. Boneless thighs save you the trouble of picking out bones while flaking the meat. How you shred your chicken is up to you, whether it's long, meaty strands; short, almost ground-up floss; or something in between. Serve these crispy flakes with garlic rice for breakfast, over lugaw for texture, or with banana leaf-wrapped rice for homemade pastil.

Chicken Adobo

Adobo Sauce

Adobo Flakes

Boneless Chicken Adobo Flakes

Make crispy, flavor-packed flakes out of this quick and easy boneless chicken adobo.

To get a taste of Hong Kong cuisine, you need to visit a 

 These 1950s-style post-war diners emerged as a reponse to British influence, resulting in eclectic Canto-Western dishes now considered icons of Hong Kong: think pineapple buns, egg tarts, milk tea, and deep-fried French toast.

To make Hong Kong-style French toast at home, start with a triple-decker sandwich of milk bread and peanut butter. You then dip it in egg, then deep-fry the whole thing until crisp and golden brown on all sides.

Before serving, finish your toast like a local: drizzle it with condensed milk or maple syrup (or both!), then top it all off with a big slab of butter. If that sounds over the top, trust us and just do it. You'll thank us right after your first bite.

Hong Kong-style French toast

Hong Kong-Style French Toast

Hong Kong's take on French toast layers milk bread and peanut butter, soaks it in egg, and fries the whole thing into a glorious golden brown treat.

We take the versatile oven toaster back to its roots, but a notch higher. On the heels of the crowd favorite, avocado toast, our ricotta toast serves as a great alternative for days when you’re feeling naughty. Our toast seamlessly combines the fruity sweetness of apples, pungency of 

Don’t be daunted by the lengthy cooking period it takes to prepare the apple butter—once you’ve cooked it down, you can store leftovers in the fridge for future snacking.

So whether you’re feeling peckish for a light snack or if you’re looking for a grown up appetizer, our recipe for toast is an easy solution to your needs. We promise that all your friends and family will love this toast (plus no one needs to know how easy it was!).

Apple Butter

Ricotta Toast

Make Apple Butter

Make Ricotta Toast

Ricotta Toast with Tuyo and Apple Butter

Make this fancy toast for breakfast with your trusty oven toaster!

Long before Italians knew what a tomato was, Roman shepherds made cacio e pepe, meaning "cheese and pepper", with aged Pecorino, black pepper, and dried pasta from their sacks. The dish eventually made its way to restaurants and households as one of the simplest Italian pastas you can make—no skillet sauce required.

Here, we brought the flavors of the Roman pasta dish to an even simpler medium: scrambled eggs.

No need to fuss over tradition and use Pecorino Romano; save it for your pasta. Parmesan cheese works just as well in this recipe. (If you have Parmigiano Reggiano, even better.)

Cacio e Pepe Scrambled Eggs

Like the Italian pasta, these scrambled eggs get their flavor from heaps of cheese and black pepper.

Ever since we hacked Ate Rica's bacsilog a few years back, we've been 

. Not a month goes by that someone in the team doesn't ask, what else can we put that cheese sauce on? The answer: everything. And we prove that once again in this bacsilog-style egg drop sandwich recipe. 

We take the popular Korean street food, inject it with a classic American breakfast combo, and add a Pinoy-style twist with a sweet cheese sauce. The result is a no-frills sandwich that'll get you excited enough to get out of bed just to crawl right back in it.

Cheese Sauce

Sandwich

Bacsilog-Style Egg Drop Sandwich

Inspired by Ate Rica's bacsilog, this bacsilog-style egg drop sandwich is an American breakfast sandwich loaded with sweet cheese sauce.

 If cooked poorly or sliced too thick, the lean cut would end up leaving your jaw with a workout.

This tapa defies tradition by switching out sirloin with affordable, fat-heavy beef belly. And instead of marinating overnight, the meat gets its seasoning from a quick braise in soy sauce and vinegar. This softens the beef belly's fat and tough meat. The result: a tender, flavorful tapa coated in just enough sauce to let the beefy flavor shine.

Modern Beef Belly Tapa

Traditional sirloin can give your jaw a workout. This modern tapa recipe uses thinly sliced beef belly for soft, flavorful meat every time.

You probably grew up eating tapa this way, piled on garlic rice with a sunny-side-up egg for breakfast. Classic tapa calls for sirloin—a firm but flavorful cut. Compared to fatty beef belly, which we use in our modern tapa recipe, sirloin is super lean. Without fat to give it moisture, it can get dry and tough when overcooked.

An overnight marinade in a soy-garlic-sugar mixture softens the sirloin while providing flavor and chew. A quick pan-fry caramelizes the beef and reduces the marinade to a shiny, dark glaze. Round out the salty-sweet beef with atchara or vinegar.

Classic Sirloin Beef Tapa

This is the classic sirloin beef tapa you grew up eating for breakfast. Serve with garlic rice and crispy fried eggs for the perfect tapsilog.

Breakfasts to Wake Up For

Tortang Galunggong (Filipino Fish Omelet)

Easy Pandesal French Toast

Saba Maruya (Filipino Banana Fritter) Pancakes

Ube (Purple Yam) Champorado

Hatch-Inspired Ube Grilled Cheese

Corned Beef Potato Pancakes

Hardcore Garlic Fried Rice (Sinangag)

Crispy Beef Tapa

Hainanese Chicken Arroz Caldo

Kesong Puti and Honey on Toasted Pandesal

Double Chocolate Champorado

Homemade Kaya (Coconut-Egg Jam)

Boneless Chicken Adobo Flakes

Hong Kong-Style French Toast

Ricotta Toast with Tuyo and Apple Butter

Cacio e Pepe Scrambled Eggs

Bacsilog-Style Egg Drop Sandwich

Modern Beef Belly Tapa

Classic Sirloin Beef Tapa

Corned Beef Bibimbap Breakfast Bowl

Rodic's-Style Chopped Beef Tapa

Shakshuka Skillet Rice with Feta Cheese

Tablea Chocolate Rolls

Jin’s Breakfast Tuna Bibimbap

Tablea Champorado (Filipino Chocolate Rice Porridge)

Tapa King-Inspired Sweet-Spicy Tapa Queen

Savory Egg & Cream French Toast

Mango-Banana-Papaya Breakfast Smoothie Bowl

Sweet Avocado Overnight Oats with Honey and Almonds

One-Bowl Bibingka Waffles with Salted Egg and Caramel

Halo-Halo Overnight Oats

Coca-Cola Waffles with Rum Caramel