Creative Filipino Food

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

For Serving

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.

Latik, the coconut caramel usually draped over kakanin like suman and biko, pairs wonderfully with 

 in this tender upside-down cake. Sophisticated enough to wow your tita friends, yet familiar enough to tuck into with kids.

Upside-down cake, a classic American dessert, is a cake that's baked upside-down: topping at bottom—usually 

 and cherries—then cake batter on top. Once baked and cooled, you flip the pan over a serving plate, releasing the cake right side up.

Instead of pineapples and cherries, this Filipino upside-down cake has a topping of bananas and latik caramel.

The base is a coconut-olive oil cake base made with almond flour, 

 and extra-virgin olive oil, yielding a unique sweetness and a moist, supersoft crumb well worth the extra trip to the grocery.

Banana Latik Caramel Topping

Coconut Cake

Banana Cake with Latik Caramel

Sliced ripe bananas and syrupy latik caramel tops this moist coconut-olive oil upside-down cake.

 in this Filipino take on banana pudding. This version adapts Magnolia Bakery's 

 with local butter cookies and a turon-inspired indulgence: chunky caramelized 

 bananas and langka (jackfruit), cooked with a bit of brandy for a fun wink of flavor.

Headline Title

Remember when cupcakes were everywhere in the early 2000s? You can thank M Bakery—or 

The New York-based neighborhood bakery shot to fame after appearing on an episode of Sex and the City. Fans and tourists waited in long lines for their own pink-frosted 

 would jump on the trend and bring it to the Philippines with 

In 2018, Magnolia Bakery opened its first Manila branch as M Bakery. Why the name change? So you won't confuse it with a certain 

After the cupcakes, everyone knows Magnolia Bakery for their second most popular dessert offering: the 

Banana pudding is a classic dessert from the American South. Similar to 

 it's a chilled, no-bake dessert made with layers of fruit, cream, and biscuits—sliced bananas, creamy vanilla custard, and vanilla wafers—in a glass dish. Some home recipes will top it off with whipped cream or toasted meringue. 

How to Make M Bakery-Style Banana Pudding

Every banana pudding needs three things: 

This turon-inspired recipe replaces the plain sliced bananas with something more exciting: 

 (jackfruit) caramelized in brandy and sugar. Sweet, jammy, and a little chunky.

The steps for the vanilla pudding come straight from the source: the 

While the authenticity helps, simplicity is the recipe's bigger draw. The pudding comes together with just four(!) ingredients:

You can find Jell-O instant vanilla pudding mix in your supermarket's baking aisle, usually next to the gelatin. If you can't get your hands on a box, you can make vanilla pudding 

 with eggs, milk, sugar, and a bit of cornstarch.

Banana pudding purists will insist on using Nabisco 

—no substitutions. (Torey echoes the same sentiment in her cookbook.)

Since Nilla Wafers aren't available in the Philippines, we use the next best thing: 

 Any plainly-flavored crunchy cookie will work here. Once chilled, they soften and take on a more cakey texture. Save a few crushed pieces for garnishing on top.

Caramelized Banana & Langka

Vanilla Pudding

Make Caramelized Banana & Langka Layer

Make Vanilla Pudding

Assemble Banana Pudding

M Bakery-Style Caramelized Banana and Langka Pudding 

Whip up Magnolia Bakery's famous banana pudding at home with a local twist: butter cookies and a turon-inspired combo of saba and langka.

 has an assertive fishy and smoky flavor that adds surprising depths to this creamy dip. This recipe treats it like smoked 

 pairing it with fresh dill and tangy sour cream.

Do I have to cook tinapa before using it?

Thanks to hot smoking, tinapa is fully cooked and ready to eat. Hot smoking cooks and flavors the fish at the same time, producing tender, smoky, and throughly cooked meat that lasts for months.

If you're still feeling wary, however, it wouldn't hurt to heat your flaked tinapa in a pan before using it in the dip.

Assemble a dip board with the tinapa dip at the center, surrounded with crunchy and sturdy snacks:

Raw carrots, cucumbers, or bell peppers sliced into batons

Outside of dipping, try spreading it on bread to gussy up a sandwich, or adding a dollop over a salad.

Smoked Galunggong (Tinapa) Dip with Dill

There's more to tinapa than breakfast with eggs. The smoked fish shines in this creamy, meaty dip for chips, crackers, and raw vegetables.

 sauce into a versatile kare-kare compound butter. Once hardened in the fridge, you can slice and use it however you like:

Toss it with meat, seafood, and vegetables.

Spread it over crusty bread and crackers as an appetizer.

To make compound butter, you mix your flavorings of choice—herbs, spices, seasonings, condiments—into softened butter. You then reshape it into a log with parchment paper or cling wrap, then refrigerate it until solid and firm. A classic type of compound butter is 

 which is flavored with parsley and lemon juice.

This recipe is as simple as unsalted butter + kare-kare sauce. You can use leftover or extra sauce from the stew, or whip up a quick version with peanut butter, bagoong, atsuete seeds, and shrimp stock, as we do.

Kare-Kare Compound Butter

Your new pantry favorite: Kare-kare compound butter. Melt it to flavor meat and vegetables, or slather it over bread and crackers as a savory spread.

Yes, you can eat shrimp shells! Once double-fried, they turn into a crisp potato chip-like snack that tastes great on their own, or showered over noodles and rice meals as a textural element. Make them once, and you'll never dare throw out your shrimp shells (and heads!) again.

Shrimp shells are edible and perfectly safe to eat. Like shrimp heads, they carry a delicious briny flavor. Their tough texture, however, makes them unpleasant to eat on their own.

When you fry them in hot oil, those tough shrimp shells turn into a crispy treat. 

 sounds like an extra step, but it pays off dramatically by dehydrating those crisp shells further, giving them an extra brittle, glassy crunch. Plus, it only takes a minute.

Once you’re done with the first fry, increase your oil’s temperature to 375°F. Toss your fried shells into the hot oil, let cook for 1 minute, then drain on paper towels.

Season fried shells with salt and instant sinigang mix

 mix gives these shrimp shells a similar flavor profile as 

 chips, like Oishi’s Ribbed Cracklings or Marty’s Chicharon. Expect sharp, mouth-puckering acidity followed by salty-sweet brine after every crunch. You’ll want an ice-cold beer to wash this down.

Crispy Sinigang Shrimp Shells

Don’t waste your shrimp heads and shells! When deep-fried and coated in sinigang mix, they transform into an irresistible crunchy snack.

 turns the cheeseburger from a solo affair into a shareable snack. Simply roll Worcestershire-seasoned ground beef, crunchy veg, and a slice of American cheese in lumpia wrappers, then deep-fry until golden.

For the dip, combine two burger condiments: ketchup and mayo. Add pickle relish for chunkiness, plus a squeeze of lemon for a bright zip. Serve as is, or lean into the 

 theme further with lettuce leaves to wrap your lumpia with, Vietnamese 

Cheeseburger Filling

Burger Sauce

Lumpia

Prepare Cheeseburger Filling

Prepare Burger Sauce

Assemble and Fry Lumpia

Cheeseburger Lumpia with Burger Sauce

A cheeseburger, but crispy. Stuff your lumpia with ground beef and American cheese, then serve it with a tart ketchup-mayo dip.

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.

These honey bagoong wings will make you forget about Buffalo, yangnyeom, or snow cheese.

 (prawn paste wings) proves that the sweet-fishy pairing works wonders with fried chicken.

So does Vietnamese gà chiên nước mắm (fish sauce wings), also known as 

In this recipe, the savory-sweet glaze uses honey to tame bagoong's saltiness. Bright, citrusy calamansi juice rounds everything out. Toss in some double-fried wings and you have an umami bomb that's funky, salty, and sweet all at once.

Finish your fried chicken with crispy garlic and chopped green onions, and serve with steamed rice or pickled vegetables, and an ice-cold beer—obviously.

Chicken

Breading

Honey Bagoong Glaze

For Garnish

Honey Bagoong Chicken Wings

Sweet honey + funky bagoong = an addictive, flavor-packed Filipino counterpart to Vietnamese fish sauce wings.

 the Filipino porridge made with chocolate and rice, into no-bake fudge bars you can snack on any time of the day. Toasted pinipig forms a toothsome rice layer mixed—and topped!—with dark chocolate.

Not everyone will agree, but we think champorado is incomplete without tuyo. Fried and chopped dulong gives the fudge some oomph, similar to the way sea salt transforms a chocolate chip cookie: the little bites of saltiness complement and cut through the sweetness. Feel free to leave it out, if you prefer.

Pinipig Layer

Chocolate Layer

No-Bake Champorado Pinipig Fudge

Make these no-bake champorado fudge bars with dark chocolate, condensed milk, and toasted pinipig.

If a donut and Japanese mochi had a baby, you'd get something like Filipino karioka (also karyoka or carioca). Like mochi, it has a chewy texture from glutinous rice flour; like a donut, it's deep-fried and rolled in sugar while warm. A common Filipino street food, the sweet snack comes skewered like 

, sometimes doused in a brown coconut syrup you might mistake for fishball sauce.

 route with cinnamon sugar and cayenne-spiked chocolate dipping sauce. But if you're feeling traditional, you can strip the recipe down for plain (but delicious) karioka. Just ditch the cinnamon and chocolate sauce, then make as directed.

Karioka

Spiced Chocolate Sauce

Cinnamon Sugar Coating

Cinnamon Sugar Karioka with Spiced Chocolate Sauce

The mochi-like Filipino donut balls known as karioka get the churro treatment with cinnamon sugar and chocolate sauce.

 that skirts the line between appetizer and dessert. Hot out of the fryer, each crispy baton breaks into ribbons of melted mozzarella cheese speckled with crunchy corn. The sugar coating is optional, but adds a delightful sweet-savory crunchy finish to every bite. Serve as a prelude to a meal, or enjoy as a party snack with a round of drinks.

Korean Corn Cheese-Filled Lumpia

 And that’s not too inaccurate, since the two dishes do share one premise: braised pork in a flavorful, soy-based sauce. But lu rou fan’s biggest distinction from adobo is its chunky, saucy texture—it’s less of a stew and more like a minced meat sauce.

This adobo recipe follows the Taiwanese form by using hand-minced pork belly. This cooks much quicker than your standard-issue adobo cuts, and yields a tender, well-balanced bite of meat and fat. A cornstarch slurry creates a velvety sauce. If you have Chinese dark soy sauce on hand, a dash of it gives your adobo a richer color.

This adobo works wonderfully as a rice topping. Spoon over bowls of steaming hot rice, garnish with garlic chips, and prepare to come back for seconds.

Slurry

Minced Pork Adobo, Lu Rou Fan-Style

 deconstructs the sour stew and transforms it into a lively fried rice. You’ll find the usual sinigang ingredients here: thinly sliced pork belly, tomatoes, kangkong, sitaw. Instant sinigang mix ties everything together. We find that Maggi’s provides just the right level of sourness—bright and puckery, but not face-scrunchingly sour.

 you can add texture to your fried rice with crispy battered vegetables. We stick to kangkong and okra, but you can experiment with other veggies of choice, like 

Fried Rice

Crispy Vegetables (Optional)

Sinigang Fried Rice with Crispy Kangkong and Okra

This twist on tortang talong puts mashed eggplant inside a light, puffy cloud of crispy eggs. Its primary inspiration is the Thai-style omelet, or khai jiao. Whisk in potato starch for crispiness, and fish sauce for saltiness and caramelization. Cooking in hot oil is key—the eggs will immediately balloon and puff up once you pour them in, creating a light, fluffy texture.

The amount of frying oil might freak you out, but don’t worry. With a high temperature and short cooking time, the tortang talong will absorb a tablespoon or two of oil at most. Any excess can be patted off with paper towels.

Puffy, Crispy Thai-Style Tortang Talong

Borrow some tricks from Thai-style crispy omelet (khai jiao) for puffy, crispy, eggy tortang talong.

A simple bowl of lugaw works wonders, but this rich, bulalo-inspired version will make your eyes roll back in pleasure. Suck the marrow off each bone before chasing it down with a spoonful of warm rice, which we boil with ground beef and kneecap bones for extra beefy flavor.

Lugaw

Topping

Bone Marrow Rice Porridge (Lugaw)

This bone marrow rice porridge looks to bulalo for a rich, beefy rendition.

While this halo-halo takes a page from Milk Bar's book, the flavorings of this dessert are truly Filipino. We used Honey Stars, resulting in a lightly sweetened ice cream accentuated by the halo-halo components. Our halo-halo weaves different textures together, from the crunch of the banana chips to the silky leche flan.

Cereal Milk Ice Cream

Halo-Halo

Halo-Halo Parfait with Cereal Milk Ice Cream

Inspired by Jollibee's limited-edition ube pies, we created these puff pastry pockets stuffed with chewy ube mochi. Store-bought puff pastry and ube halaya makes this recipe a breeze; so does our microwave mochi trick.

Ube Mochi Filling

Make the Ube Mochi Filling

Make the Pie Pockets

Jollibee-Inspired Ube Pie Pockets

Made with store-bought pastry, these simple ube pie pockets bake into a crispy, flaky treat stuffed with chewy ube halaya.

The humble puto makes a great blank canvas for different flavors. This recipe infuses the Filipino treat with the flavors of coconut milk and muscovado sugar. Like a cake, you can check if your puto is ready by inserting a toothpick in the center—it should come out clean. After that, you can turn off the steamer, put the lid on, and let the puto rest for five minutes.

Coconut-Muscovado Puto

The simplicity of puto makes it a great canvas for flavor. This version keeps it Filipino with coconut and muscovado sugar.

There’s no singular definition for Filipino ensalada—many versions exist, like talong, mangga, lato, etc. But what’s common among all of these is their ability to showcase our rich agriculture. Ensaladas are proof that with great produce, you can create magic. This recipe for Filipino ensalada dumplings recipe is no exception. The filling makes use of five different and readily available vegetables. And in lieu of dressing, we throw in a sweet bagoong and calamansi dip!

This recipe was developed in partnership with

, a social enterprise that aims to support the country’s food security, achieve environmental sustainability, and drive economic opportunity by harnessing the full potential of our local agriculture.

Sweet Bagoong-Calamansi Dip

Dumplings

Filipino Ensalada Dumplings with Bagoong-Calamansi Dip

These Filipino ensalada dumplings pack some of our favorite local vegetables into pan-fried dumplings.

 with ube, then stuffing it with cheese. We immediately tried to make our own, with leftover ube extract and Eden cheese in our pantry. It was glorious, and so we're sharing our ube cheese pandesal recipe with you.

It's important to use the best ube extract you can find to really get the flavor in there. And for the cheese, we found that 

 matches the profile really well. Alternatively, you can use cream cheese or Quickmelt.

Ube-Cheese Pandesal

Whoever thought of flavoring pandesal with ube, then filling it with cheese is a genius. Here's how to make ube cheese pandesal at home.

Lola Nena’s already had donuts on their menu as early as 2018. And though people generally loved the 

-inspired snack, a lot of them hoped for it to have more cheese. So in 2020, Lola Nena’s came out with their Triple Cheese Donuts: their original old-fashioned donut with three times the cheese. (So no, it’s not three kinds of cheese in the donut.)

To make Pinoy-style donuts, this recipe starts with dough that’s closer to 

Lola Nena's-Inspired Cheese-Filled Donuts

This Lola Nena's-inspired recipe makes fluffy, melted cheese-filled donuts covered in margarine and sugar, just like panaderya bicho-bicho.

Creative Filipino Food

Crispy Beef Tapa

Hainanese Chicken Arroz Caldo

Banana Cake with Latik Caramel

M Bakery-Style Caramelized Banana and Langka Pudding

Smoked Galunggong (Tinapa) Dip with Dill

Kare-Kare Compound Butter

Crispy Sinigang Shrimp Shells

Cheeseburger Lumpia with Burger Sauce

Double Chocolate Champorado

Honey Bagoong Chicken Wings

No-Bake Champorado Pinipig Fudge

Cinnamon Sugar Karioka with Spiced Chocolate Sauce

Korean Corn Cheese-Filled Lumpia

Minced Pork Adobo, Lu Rou Fan-Style

Sinigang Fried Rice with Crispy Kangkong and Okra

Puffy, Crispy Thai-Style Tortang Talong

Bone Marrow Rice Porridge (Lugaw)

Halo-Halo Parfait with Cereal Milk Ice Cream

Jollibee-Inspired Ube Pie Pockets

Coconut-Muscovado Puto

Filipino Ensalada Dumplings with Bagoong-Calamansi Dip

Ube-Cheese Pandesal

Lola Nena's-Inspired Cheese-Filled Donuts

Manam-Inspired Watermelon Sinigang

Ube-Langka-Coconut Sapin-Sapin Layer Cake

Tablea Chicken and Pork Adobo

Mango Jam Rolls with Mango-Coconut Cream

Kora-Inspired Leche Flan Donuts

Lumpia Cabbage Salad with Crispy Wrappers

Pinoy BBQ Meatballs

One-Bowl Bibingka Waffles with Salted Egg and Caramel

Ube Spanish Bread

Toasted Sesame and Coconut Palitaw Horchata

No-Bake Vegan Cloud 9

Boozy Lambanog Halo-Halo with Melon and Nata de Coco

Homemade Ube Piaya (Filipino Flatbread)

Caramelized Lumpia Wrappers with Coconut Jam

Ginataang Kalabasa (Coconut-Squash) Hummus

Adobo Rice Lumpia

Leche Flan Pie with Lengua de Gato Crust

Buko Juice-Braised Crispy Pork Belly

Mango Soju Yakult Ice Candy

Adobong Lechon Kawali

Sinigang Fried Chicken