Hot soups and spicy food to keep you warm on rainy days.

Rainy Day Eats

Before you say "cholesterol" and run, try adding a spoonful of 

 to your next last-minute noodle situation. In the case of these chili oil knife-cut noodles, the orange paste adds a buttery, 

 richness and a nuanced seafood flavor to the 15-minute dish.

Knife-cut noodles (or dao xiao mian) come from China’s Shanxi province. As the name implies, they’re made by thinly slicing a block of stiff dough into boiling water. This forms ribbon-like noodles that are thicker and chewier than the usual hand-pulled variety. When cooked, knife-cut noodles curl and form 

Are knife-cut noodles available in the Philippines?

Unless your supermarket is cool, you probably won't find instant knife-cut noodles there. Check out specialty Asian groceries or 

If you have flour and water, you can also 

Aligue (Crab Fat Paste) Chili Oil Noodles

Toss your noodles in hot, fragrant, and richly flavored aligue (crab fat paste) chili oil.

If you're craving curry at home, you're probably not going to make 

—it's right there in the name—but unless you have the luxury of time and 

 it's not something you can cook everyday. If you want curry

 you need something easy, fast, and cheap.

Enter Pinoy-style chicken curry: chicken and vegetables simmered in turmeric-yellow coconut curry sauce. With hot rice on the side, it becomes one of the most comforting homestyle dishes you can make.

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Every home cook has Pinoy-style chicken curry in their repertoire. (And if not, that's what this recipe is for!) The dish bears the DNA of 

 manok: a base of garlic, onion, and ginger underscoring a savory coconut milk sauce. What transforms it from ginataang manok to chicken curry is, well, curry powder.

Every grocery's spice section will have a pack of yellow stuff labeled "curry powder". Its origins go all the way back to British India, where Indian traders formulated a simple readymade spice mix for the British to cook curry with.

You can think of curry powder as the Westernized cousin of garam masala, the warm spice blend used in Indian cooking. Curry powder is heavy on the turmeric (an ingredient absent in garam masala), which imparts that unmistakable yellow color. Its flavor profile leans milder and sweeter than Indian curries.

 Use bone-in chicken thighs, legs, or a mix of both.

 are potatoes, carrots, and bell peppers. This version comes from our recipe developer's mom, who adds chopped eggplant to her curry.

Home cooks love Pinoy chicken curry for its versatility. Whatever extra vegetables you have on hand will make delicious additions: 

Pinoy Chicken Curry with Vegetables

Simple and comforting, Filipino chicken curry features tender chicken and colorful vegetables simmered in a fragrant coconut-based gravy.

Proof that eggs can make anything better: Take a page from 

 and crack a few into laing, the earthy Filipino stew made with taro leaves, for richness and color.

Laing hails from the region of Bicol, home to 

 in Bikolano) are stewed in a broth of ginger, coconut milk, and red chilies. Some cooks like to add meat or seafood for a bit of protein.

Shakshouka is a North African and Middle Eastern dish of eggs poached in a thick and tangy tomato-based sauce. Aromatic spices like cumin, paprika, and cayenne pepper give it a warm, complex flavor. Its simplicity makes it easy to throw in some leafy vegetables, like spinach, or even cheese. You want crusty bread or pita on the side to mop up the luscious eggs and sauce.

Laing and shakshouka = versatile, veg-heavy dishes

Laing has a rich and saucy consistency similar to shakshouka, making it thick enough to simmer eggs in. And the protein doesn't have to stop there—you can customize it with pork, shrimp, or fish to add more meatiness. Want more vegetables? Try crunchy sigarilyas or 

 Then skip the shakshouka-required crusty bread for a hot bowl of steamed rice.

Laing (Taro Leaves in Coconut Milk) with Eggs, Shakshouka-Style

Treat your laing like a shakshouka and add eggs!

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

For Serving

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.

 made with pork, its rich, chili-flecked coconut gravy goes great with most proteins. This recipe uses boneless chicken thighs for a quick-cooking yet flavorful variation.

Sigarilyas or winged beans feel right at home in Bicol Express. After all, they're the star ingredient of another spicy coconut-based dish: 

 Add them at the last step to avoid overcooking—the crisp beans adds a delightful contrast to the tender chicken.

Chicken Bicol Express with Sigarilyas

Different protein, same spicy coconut stew. This Bicol Express makes use of chicken and sigarilyas (winged beans) for a variation that's just as easy to make.

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.

In the 1970s, restauranteur Cely Kalaw came up with a 

 Some say that for inspiration, she looked to a spicy Bicolano stew of chilies and coconut milk: sinilihan, also known as ginataang sili or gulay na lada. Kalaw added pork to the originally meatless dish, then introduced it at her restaurant under a catchier name: 

When Bicol Express exploded in popularity, the new name eventually found its way back to Bicol. Soon, Bicolanos started calling their native sinilihan Bicol Express, too. But some differences exist between Kalaw's and Bicol's versions.

What's the Difference Between Sinilihan and Bicol Express?

You can think of Bicol Express as the cover of a song that blew up and became more popular than the original. Some will claim that sinilihan is the "original" song—the version Bicolanos people grew up and are more familiar with.

Which version is better? That's a matter of personal preference. Despite different arrangements, both sing the same delicious, spicy, coconut-flavored song.

Let's look at what sets Bicolano sinilihan apart from Manila-born Bicol Express:

 compared to Bicol Express, which has a pale and creamy sauce.

Sinilihan is cooked until the oil splits from the coconut cream, extending its shelf life. Some cooks pack and sell it in jars as a ready-to-eat condiment or ulam.

Why Do You Need to Split the Oil From the Cream?

Coconut milk spoils very quickly because of its high moisture content. When a moist environment is present, it can breed bacteria and cause spoilage.

It's why coconut milk labels tell you to use all of it ASAP once opened. If you leave it out at room temperature, it will start going bad in about two hours.

Before groceries and canned coconut products, traditional sinilihan used freshly extracted coconut cream. Without any stabilizers, it spoiled even faster than canned cream.

Cooks found that cooking off the coconut cream's excess moisture made sinilihan last much longer. To do that, you need to simmer the stew until the cream split into oil and water. The water—the moist environment bacteria love—would then cook off and evaporate, leaving a coconut-flavored oil.

If you've made Bicol Express before, sinilihan is just as easy to make. Cook up a big batch and serve with heaps of hot steamed rice. If you start to sweat and can't feel your tongue, it means you made it right!

Sinilihan (Traditional Bicol Express)

If you think Bicol Express isn't spicy enough, make it the Bicol way: less pork, reduced coconut cream, and more tongue-numbing chilies.

The bed of melted cheddar, the crunch of sweet corn, the pull of gooey mozzarella with every slurp of noodle. Once you try it, you'll tell all your friends to combine instant noodles with Korean 

This recipe uses Samyang Buldak ramen, the South Korean instant noodles of 

 challenge fame, to bring an appetizing heat to the dish. Grab the Quattro Cheese variant, if you can.

Korean Corn Cheese Instant Noodles

Presenting our best instant ramen hack yet: a bed of hot, crunchy, gooey Korean corn cheese over instant noodles.

Arroz caldo, the hearty rice porridge cooked with chicken and ginger, is chicken soup for the Pinoy soul. The grains, boiled and broken down in broth until creamy, take on a risotto-like texture. Each bite warms the body, making it the perfect merienda on a rainy day, or a nourishing meal when you're sick.

Arroz caldo goes by many names, depending on where you're from. While arroz caldo is a type of lugaw, lugaw is not always arroz caldo!

 we have lugaw. The word means "porridge" or "gruel" in Filipino, and covers any dish made with boiled and thickened rice or grains. Examples of lugaw include arroz caldo, 

 (lelot being the Kapampangan term for lugaw).

Arroz caldo is Spanish in name, but Chinese in origin. It is said to be our adaptation of congee, which was introduced to the Philippines by Chinese immigrants. Our Spanish conquerors didn't care to learn the Chinese language, and called the dish arroz caldo—"rice broth". Eventually, the term referred to the ginger-flavored Pinoy rice porridge with chicken.

Take your basic lugaw and add chicken, ginger and kasubha: that's basically arroz caldo. To get the best texture and flavor out of your bowl, this recipe adds a few more steps—from toasting the rice to cooking down your chicken skin.

For the best texture, use equal parts glutinous rice and jasmine rice. Glutinous rice gives arroz caldo its thick, starchy texture while jasmine rice balances it out with fluffy, fragrant grains.

Toasting the uncooked rice in oil enhances its color and nutty flavor. To make it even more flavorful, mash itlog na maalat (salted egg) with the grains to give it a savory, salty umami.

To achieve that signature arroz caldo-yellow, add a few strands of kasubha while cooking the rice.

Grating your garlic and ginger does two things: it strengthens their flavor, and makes them easier to incorporate into the arroz caldo—no stray chunks to bite into. But if you like the bite of thinly sliced ginger, you can add some into your arroz caldo right before serving.

Don't discard your chicken skin! Cook it with your rice to break down the collagen and fatten the soup. This gives your arroz caldo a glossy, silky texture and more chicken flavor.

Cooking the chicken last ensures that your meat stays soft and juicy, not dry and stringy. Add it to your arroz caldo at the last 10 minutes of cooking.

Chicken

Rice

Chicken Arroz Caldo (Filipino Chicken Rice Porridge)

Arroz caldo, the Pinoy lugaw flavored with chicken and ginger, becomes more flavorful when you toast the rice first.

 to instant noodles? We know how it sounds. But give it a shot and you’ll understand why 

Skip the regular mayo for this recipe—you need to use 

 Kewpie mayo has a richer, silkier texture and a signature tang from rice vinegar. When you whisk it with ramen seasoning, minced garlic, and a whole egg, the mayo upgrades your watery noodle soup into a thick, luxurious broth. If you close your eyes and take a slurp, you’d think you were at a ramen restaurant.

Noodles

For Garnish

Kewpie Mayo Instant Noodles

Some people don't like chicken tinola, calling it a flavorless, watery chicken soup. We don't like to judge, but that doesn't sound like a proper tinola at all! This Filipino household staple should be comforting and restorative: tender chicken cuts and in a clean, gingery soup.

Best Tinolang Manok (Chicken Tinola)

Send this recipe to your friend who hates tinola.

Traffic's bad, the rain is heavy, and you're hungry. You stop by a roadside carinderia and order a serving of 

 The lady gives you a plate of hot rice with a side of tender beef coated in a dark sauce. Then you get a bowl of plain soup, which she says you can refill if you want. With every bite of the beef, your patience thickens; with every sip of the soup, your body heats up. And you go back to the road a different person.

There's no better beef pares than the one 

. But this homemade version delivers the same nourishing comfort, promising flavorful, fall-off-the-bone meat and a not-too-sweet asado sauce.

Beef Broth

Beef Pares

Make the Broth

Make the Beef Pares

Best Beef Pares with Asado Sauce

This beef pares recipe teaches you how to make a sweet-savory asado sauce for a flavorful soup.

 a porridge of rice balls simmered in sweet coconut milk. Different provinces have their own unique variations. For example, Pangasinan’s 

 includes tapioca pearls and local produce like sweet potato, cassava, or saba bananas.

We adapted this recipe from Marvin Gapultos, author of 

 The rice balls and sago pearls makes this porridge fun to eat. Powdered milk gives it creaminess; vanilla makes it taste like ice cream. But feel free to skip them if you prefer a more coconut-y flavor.

Sago

Sticky Rice Balls

Sweet Coconut Milk

Filipino Coconut Milk Porridge with Mango and Sago

This version of Filipino tambo-tambo or ginataang bilo-bilo combines sweet mango with sticky rice balls, sago, and creamy coconut milk.

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.

Korean steamed eggs (gyeran-jjim) lie halfway between an eggy soup and a silky custard. Like Japanese chawan mushi and Chinese zheng shui dan, it’s extremely cheap and dead simple to make. Once you master the recipe, customize it however you want: replace the water with stock, add chili flakes, or adjust the egg-water ratio. Enjoy as an appetizer or as a simple meal, served with hot rice.

A traditional ttukbaegi makes this dish a one-pot affair you can cook in and eat straight out of. Rinse and repeat for round two, if you’re hungry.

Ingredients

Korean Steamed Eggs (Gyeran-jjim)

This traditional Korean steamed egg dish is a worthy addition to your arsenal of simple egg recipes.

Eggs on rice is a dead-simple equation for an effortless but rewarding meal. Here we toss hard-boiled eggs in a hot, fiery-red sauce. Thanks to gochujang, or Korean fermented chili paste, the eggs acquire a deep, fermented flavor with a sweet-spicy sting. Minced green onions and sesame seeds give it color. These eggs are substantial enough to serve over rice or noodles, but will play well with meat and vegetables, too.

Eggs

Sweet-Spicy Sauce

Sweet-Spicy Korean Braised Eggs

Turn hard-boiled eggs into a comforting meal by braising them in a sweet-spicy Korean sauce. The secret ingredient: gochujang.

Champorado is a Filipino start-of-the-day staple that almost doubles as a dessert: chocolate rice porridge made with sticky rice (malagkit) and chocolate (usually tablea). It's creamy, sweet, and filling, best eaten on a cold day.

This recipe guides you through how to cook a perfect version of traditional tablea champorado. No fancy ingredients, no out-of-this-world techniques. A tried-and-tested method to make champorado that gives you the pure flavor of cocoa and the pure texture of malagkit in a thick, creamy soup.

Tablea Champorado (Filipino Chocolate Rice Porridge)

Here's how to cook champorado, the rich Pinoy chocolate rice porridge, using tablea.

What once was a lazy way to get the flavors of tantanmen into some instant ramen became one of our best recipes yet. This is our unofficial hack for Mendokoro Ramenba‘s tantanmen. For this recipe, we suggest using pork-based ramen like 

This instant ramen tantanmen is thick, slightly creamy, and flavorful. The ground pork gives it a nice meaty flavor—especially if you have those browned parts. The broth is nutty; and while it’s still pretty spicy, it doesn’t violate the senses thanks to the addition of milk. You can add a bunch of other stuff to this recipe to finish: sesame seeds, spring onions, or even some nori!

Instant Ramen Tantanmen

There are so many things going on in pho. You've got sharp but subtle savoriness from the broth and spices, freshness from the herbs—and that's not even all of it. This complexity is achieved through hours of building the broth. But you don't always need to leave the pot on for seven hours just to get the 

 soup. This instant pho gets you a light, flavorful pho, except it only takes 45 minutes to put together.

Granted, any instant pho, including ours, won't replicate the exact same experience as 

. But what this recipe promises is a similar experience; one that mimics traditional pho, without the same time-consuming process. And we do this through a bouillon cube and a ton of aromatics and spices to make up for what's lost in the time.

Broth

Assembly

Instant Pho

This instant pho recipe builds a flavorful broth in more than half the time of a traditional pho, but it delivers a similar experience.

Lelot balatong means “bean porridge” in Kapampangan. When toasted, green munggo darkens into a coffee-like shade of brown with a deep, nutty flavor. The toasted beans are then split, dehulled, and cooked with sticky rice in sweet coconut milk.

Don’t limit yourself to merienda! Enjoy this hug in a bowl for breakfast or even as a dessert, like you would with 

Ginataang Munggo (Lelot Balatong)

Think coconut-flavored champorado with a nutty bite. Toasted munggo, glutinous rice, and coconut milk come together in this Filipino merienda.

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.

Rainy afternoons call for ginataang mais, a Filipino porridge of young corn kernels and malagkit rice cooked in coconut milk.

Long-grain glutinous rice keeps its shape better than short-grain, which tends to break down and turn mushy by the time the ginataan thickens. We suggest using fresh corn for its natural sweetness, but canned sweet corn will work fine in a pinch. Adding coconut cream at the end provides extra creaminess and flavor.

Best Ginataang Mais

This ginataang mais recipe uses sticky rice, fresh corn, and a combination of coconut milk and cream.

Bicol Express is a spicy Filipino stew made with two signature ingredients of Bicol cuisine: fiery-hot chilies and creamy coconut milk. Cely Kalaw, the restauranteur 

 for inventing and popularizing the dish, named it after the old railway connecting Manila and Albay.

The origin of the dish itself is not as clear-cut. Some say that Bicol Express started as a less-spicy 

 of Kalaw's signature spicy laing. Others claim that Kalaw adapted Bicol's 

 or ginataang sili by adding pork. It could also be 

 an existing Bicolano dish, repackaged with a catchier name.

Whatever the real story is, we can all agree that Bicol Express should, at the bare minimum, be 

Depending on the household, the specifics of these ingredients can change: coconut cream versus milk, green versus red chilies, bagoong guisado or alamang, ground pork versus pork belly, and so on.

This recipe gives you a solid Bicol Express to enjoy as is or to fine-tune to your liking. Some versions are garnished with cooked ground pork or chicken.

Sinilihan, AKA traditional Bicol Express, prefers the spicy oil separated from the cream. We have a whole recipe for that 

This recipe both coconut cream (for the sauce) and coconut milk (for cooking the pork). Go grab your brand of choice, either canned or boxed, from the grocery.

If you can get fresh coconut cream, even better! Any coconut-forward dish like this one can benefit from naturally sweet and fresh-tasting coconut.

—to set your butt on fire. This recipe fulfills the requirement by using both siling labuyo (red chilies) and siling haba (green chilies).

Pork belly is the standard cut used for Bicol Express, and for good reason: It has a good balance of fat and meat, of flavor and tenderness. No need to stray from tradition here.

Most Bicol Express recipes call for bagoong guisado, but depending on the brand, it can taste too aggressive. And as much as we like the convenience of jarred alamang, it made our Bicol Express too salty, and left a slightly unpleasant smell and aftertaste.

We recommend using fresh alamang or balaw from the wet market. Some supermarkets also sell the pink paste in plastic containers. Fresh alamang starts out as salty as jarred bagoong, but with proper prep, you can temper it into a mildly shrimpy, just-right fishy flavor.

Bicol Express

Bicol Express is a spicy Filipino stew of sliced pork belly cooked in coconut cream, shrimp paste, and tons of chilies. 

As much as we love the convenience of instant sinigang mix, nothing beats old-school sinigang made with sampalok, or tamarind. Like drinking fresh orange juice after a lifetime of powdered stuff, sampalok-soured broth has a brighter, fresher tartness with citrus-like notes. For the pork, we use two cuts: ribs for porky flavor, and belly for richness. 

Best Pork Sinigang with Sampalok

Our best pork sinigang recipe gives you an old-school sour soup made with sampalok.