Creative Filipino Food

 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

For Serving

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 

 than traditional donuts. This gets you large dough that’s both soft and chewy at the same time. We’ve filled it with Eden cheese (you can also use Quickmelt) to keep the flavor familiar. A coating of margarine and white sugar gives the donuts an extra sweet-salty crunch.

Donuts

Coating

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.

Adding fruits into savory dishes is far from novel and 

. Enter Manam’s Watermelon Sinigang, with a soup that's soured by sampalok and rounded out with sweet, fresh watermelon.

Manam-Inspired Watermelon Sinigang

Manam's Watermelon Sinigang is the sign you're looking for if you wanna create something different this rainy season.

This sapin-sapin layer cake tastes like your childhood made even more childlike. You can impart as much 

 flavor as you want into each sponge. We’ve even added coconut to the crimson and cream-colored layers. This instantly makes it much more flavorful than a lot of sapin-sapins out there, where the massive amount of food coloring takes precedent over flavor, making them taste like colored plastic. A touch of halaya buttercream finishes the cake.

Cake

Frosting

Make the Cakes

Make the Frosting

Assemble the Cake

Ube-Langka-Coconut Sapin-Sapin Layer Cake

Turn old-school sapin-sapin into a modern-day confection with this showstopping layer cake.

Chocolate gets pigeonholed as a dessert-only ingredient, but using it for savory dishes can yield unexpectedly delicious results. Here, local tablea adds complexity to garlicky 

—a deep, semi-sweet, semi-bitter richness that only dark chocolate can provide.

Add maybe a chilli or two for heat, or leave this adobo alone to develop into a dark stew. This one's far from your lola‘s good old-fashioned take.

Tablea Chicken and Pork Adobo

This deep, dark adobo's secret ingredient? Chocolate.

If you've ever made cinnamon rolls, pouring cream all over the dough before proofing may seem odd. We borrowed this step from 

 or Samoan coconut buns. Here, the mango rolls absorb the mango-coconut cream while proofing, which makes them soft—almost bread pudding-like—out of the oven. Then the baked rolls are sauced with even more cream, for good measure. Each bite tastes like a tropical summer.

Mango Jam Rolls

Mango-Coconut Cream

Mango Jam Rolls with Mango-Coconut Cream

Like cinnanon rolls, but tropical. Mango jam runs through these soft rolls, which are topped off with summery mango-coconut cream.

 a Filipino bakery. The owner, Kimberly Camara, found her grandmother's leche flan recipe from old notebooks. She decided to incorporate them into brioche donuts, filled with leche cream and topped with a round slice of the custard. It became such a hit that the donuts sell out every week, with at least 8,000 people waiting moments just to get a box.

This recipe is very simple, one that's easy to make even for beginner bakers. The best part about is that you don't even have to make your own leche flan for it.

Filling (Optional)

To Finish

Kora-Inspired Leche Flan Donuts

Inspired by New York-based bakery Kora, these leche flan donuts are filled and topped with the classic Filipino dessert.

Lumpia is a staple in Filipino celebrations. It's always one of the first things to run out, either during the meal itself or when everybody packs food in to-go containers after the party. No one can resist the trifecta of a crispy lumpia wrapper, meaty filling, and sweet chili sauce, that's why we've applied them to this lumpia salad recipe.

, so we can't really recommend it for people looking to eat "lighter" and "healthier." What it is, instead, is a hearty, flavorful, textured appetizer. It promises everything you love about lumpia without the extra effort of having to roll individual pieces.

Dressing

Filling

Fried Lumpia Wrappers

Assembly

Lumpia Cabbage Salad with Crispy Wrappers

This lumpia salad recipe has the crispy wrapper, the meaty filling, and the sweet chili sauce of regular lumpia—achieved in an easier method.

Don't have an outdoor grill to make Filipino barbecue? Turn them into meatballs. It still has all the flavors you’d want in a classic BBQ—sweet, slightly sour, and meaty.

Meatballs

BBQ Sauce

Pinoy BBQ Meatballs

No grill, no problem. This recipe turns classic Filipino BBQ into sweet, ketchup-y meatballs.

This recipe marries bibingka with another comfort dish—waffles. A simple homemade bibingka batter comes together with rice flour, brown sugar, and coconut milk. We also decided to brighten it up ourselves with some salted caramel, using some salted eggs to bring out more of the caramel’s buttery flavor.

Since you’re working with rice flour, the waffles will be on the richer side. For crispier waffles, add 1 to 2 minutes to the cooking time.

One-Bowl Bibingka Waffles with Salted Egg and Caramel

If you're bored of ube-cheese pandesal, work with another shape and make ube Spanish bread. This recipe gives you the option to flavor the bread, the filling, or both. Don’t be intimidated by the shaping part—imagine rolling up long pizzas, starting from the crust and working your way up to the tip.

Make the Dough

Make the Filling

Shape the Dough

Bake the Bread

Dough

Ube Spanish Bread

Ditch the ube-cheese pandesal and try something new: ube Spanish bread.

This "horchata" uses sticky rice, the type of rice used to make kakanin, or Filipino rice cakes. Unlike the cinnamon-spiced Mexican drink, this adaptation features palitaw's nutty toasted sesame and coconut flavors.

Toasted Sesame and Coconut Palitaw Horchata

Palitaw takes the form of a sweet, nutty beverage that's perfect for beating the summer heat.

Cloud 9 has just enough of everything: nougat, chocolate, caramel with 

 packed in a delectable bite-sized chocolate bar. We recreate all of these elements in a no-bake, vegan recipe. It looks fancy enough to pass for a plated restaurant dessert, but when all the layers come together, we hope you’ll be reminded of grade school snacking days of scrounging up your peso coins for a taste of this goodness.

Nougat Layer

Peanut-Caramel Layer

No-Bake Vegan Cloud 9

We all have our own idea of the perfect halo-halo. For some, it requires a slice of 

; for others, it’s packed with everything imaginable.

But for San Francisco-based recipe developer and food photographer 

 anything goes. “All I really want is some fruit, 

 mixed with milky ice, and something creamy. Super streamlined, super minimal.” She invitesd us to her kitchen to show us how to make a simple, 

With only a handful of ingredients, the recipe is very easy to put together. Its mix of flavors from coconut, pandan, and melon makes it so refreshing—fit for the 110°F California weather and sunny Philippine tropics. Plus we’re not at all mad at the idea of spiking our dessert. In fact, once this halo-halo melts, it transforms into a creamy, decadent cocktail.

Boozy Lambanog Halo-Halo with Melon and Nata de Coco

No one ever comes out of Negros Occidental without 

. There are dozens of pasalubong shops everywhere you go, even at the airport! Why would you even think twice about sinking your teeth into this Ilonggo snack, anyway? Flaky flatbread cooked to a toast, filled with deeply sweet 

—it's addictive. We fill ours with ube to make it even more irresistible.

Piaya Dough

Homemade Ube Piaya (Filipino Flatbread)

Piaya is a delicacy from Negros Occidental—flaky flatbread filled with sweet filling. This ube piaya recipe shows you how to make it at home!

 is often sought after for its filling, but much of the 

’s appeal can be attributed to its wrapper. This sweet lumpia wrappers recipe, inspired by 

, or disc-like sheets of fried pastry coated in sugar and assorted spices is made to honor the simple yet satisfying crispiness that wrappers can bring. Take it to the next level with a generous drizzling of 

Sweet yet complex and uniquely tangy, it really brings the Filipino theme forward.

Caramelized Lumpia Wrappers with Coconut Jam

Turon sans bananas is not as bad as you think.

Filipino cuisine has a special way of flaunting and bringing out the best in local veggies. Case in point: ginataang kalabasa, a dish of native squash stewed in coconut milk. Naturally sweet and creamy but full of earthiness and umami, it makes for a hearty Filipino main that’s especially good piled on steamy white rice.

Here, we bring ginataan and its characteristic flavors into a soft, spreadable hummus. It's a straightforward affair, entailing little more than puréeing together cooked squash, coconut milk, and chickpeas until it forms a chunky but creamy mixture.

Crudités or toasted pita wedges on the side are a no-brainer dipping medium option, but its culture-crossing attribute also lends it a versatility worth taking advantage of and experimenting with—try it as a thick “gravy” with poached seafood, as a spread to liven up a vegetarian sandwich, or even as ulam with rice.

Ginataang Kalabasa (Coconut-Squash) Hummus

This lumpia combines the best of two classic Filipino dishes: adobo’s salty-tangy goodness and the flaky crunch of lumpia that contrasts beautifully with the rice. Pork broth cubes lend a meaty umami undertone that ties everything together.

Adobo Rice Lumpia

Leftover adobo and rice + lumpia wrappers = genius.

This dessert hybrid combines two beloved Filipino sweets into a creamy, indulgent pie. Crushed lengua de gato goes into the cookie crust, providing a sweeter, lighter crumb than a crust of graham crackers. Blending leche flan sounds insane, but you can't argue with the incredibly sinful result. The flan gets liquefied into a custard-like consistency with all of its caramelised flavors intact.

Don’t be worried if this all sounds a little too sweet—you’ll be surprised to find that this recipe isn’t. Nothing a quick sprinkle of flaky salt can fix (or make better).o

Lengua de Gato Crust

Leche Flan Filling

Whipped Cream

Make Lengua de Gato Crust

Make Leche Flan Filling

Assemble the Pie

Leche Flan Pie with Lengua de Gato Crust

This dessert hybrid combines lengua de gato and leche flan into an indulgent pie.

The abundance of coconuts on our islands makes the fruit an important part of our cuisine. Gata, or coconut milk, is used to dress squash, make 

 creamy, or wrap up a meal through desserts like 

In this recipe, we decided to introduce more of that delicious coconut flavor into what would otherwise be a traditional pork in gata recipe. Using fresh buko juice (coconut water), including its meat, concentrates the coconut flavor of the stew, drawing out its luscious, slightly sweet, and nutty flavors. The coconut meat softens while cooking, making for a surprising bite.

Pork Belly

Coconut Sauce

Buko Juice-Braised Crispy Pork Belly

Instead of gata (coconut milk), buko juice (coconut water) gives this braised pork a lighter, fresher flavor.

This recipe marries two cultures: Filipino mango ice candy and Korean yakult soju. The alcohol prevents the candy from completely freezing, creating a slushy texture that melts in your mouth. Make a couple of batches, stick ’em in a cooler, and bring them out on your last summer hurrah.

Mango Soju Yakult Ice Candy

When talking about Filipino comfort food, it’s not a surprise to find Adobo and Lechon Kawali on top of most people's lists—so we figured, why not just marry them together? Our Adobong Lechon Kawali recipe has got that crisp, crackling pork skin with its nostalgic flavor of adobo that will make your eyes roll to the back of your head in pleasure. No matter where you are, this recipe will make you feel being back at home.

Adobong Lechon Kawali

Fried chicken is the unofficial favorite food of many Filipinos, that's why we've created a version that is sure to excite your palate and introduce a spin on the classic fried chicken. Sinigang fried chicken uses the powder, giving an extra punch of sourness to the crunchy, golden exterior of chicken that we love. Rather than using extra spices to flavor our deep-fried fowl, we've gone down an even more Pinoy route, with sour flavors that are familiar to us.

Sinigang Fried Chicken

Everyone has their own favorite version of fried chicken. But sometimes, we look for newer takes. Hence, sinigang fried chicken is born.