6 Delicious Filipino Dishes to Try

The Philippines are home to a wide range of amazing tasty food. From gourmet pork to delicious comfort food made from fish, we absolutely adore the dishes that come from the island country. Read on to learn about and be inspired by six of our favourite cuisines!

1 Sinigang

Sinisang is a soup made with lots of meat, vegetables, and tamarind (also known as sampalok). The tamarind makes the sinisang taste very sour, which creates a distinctly Philippine taste to the dish. Pork (baboy) is the most common meat used when making sinisang, but chicken, fish, and occasionally beef are also popular options. Depending on where you go in the Philipines, other souring agents include guava, kalamansi, or even tomatoes. The soup itself is delicious, and you can find it almost anywhere you go!

2 Adobo

Adobo, particularly chicken adobo, is perhaps the most famous food you can get in the Philippines. It is a fantastic comfort food that is loved by everyone. Adobo is Spanish for ‘marinade’, and the comfort food is just that: chicken or pork marinated in soy sauce, vinegar, and spices. There are hundreds of regional variants of adobo with different secondary ingredients to give a unique flavour every time you try it, but the warm filling meat is too tasty to pass up.

3 Filipino Fish Balls

Fish Balls are a common street food in the Philippines, sold by street vendors in wooden carts on pretty much every street corner! Usually served on barbeque sticks, piping hot from being deep fried in oil, Fish Balls are an amazing national delicacy that explodes with flavour. The soft and meaty balls are pressed down into flatter circles, and each bite into their springy texture is a delight. Our favourite part, however, is the fantastic array of sauces that are served with each Fish Ball skewer – you get to taste a combination of amazing flavours every time you are served some Fish Balls!

4 Kinilaw

Kinilaw, a Filipino-specific ceviche, is made of raw seafood and fish that has been cubed, mixed with vinegar, and paired with a souring agent like kalamansi or tamarind for flavour. Typically chillies, garlic, lime, immature coconuts, onions or singuelas are added in different proportions to bring out more flavour, neutralise any overpowering fishiness of the dish, and bulk up the meal. In the north, it is more common to see lightly-grilled meat instead of raw fish for this meal – this is called Kilawin. In the southern Philippines, the main ingredient in Kinilaw is often marlin or mackerel.

5 Pancit

Pancit is a delicious Filipino noodle that is commonly used in stir fry dishes, including Pancit Canton and Pancit Bihon. One of our favourite simple comfort food recipes for Pancit involves cooking some pancit noodles, pork, and veggies all together in a huge stir fry pot with some boullion and leftover spices to make some amazing noodles!

If you are looking for some oriental noodles to make this dish yourself, check out our online store for some amazing options! We have a wide range of delicious ingredients to help you make your next meal. Pancit is relatively simple to make and delicious to eat, so if you are interested in making this meal for yourself, dive in and see what you create!

6 Lechon

Lechon is technically a Spanish dish first, but the pork-based cuisine became popular in the colonial period, spread to the Philippines more than three hundred years ago, and has stuck around ever since! In the Philippines, the dish has an even more special meaning: typically only prepared for special occasions or holidays, lechon is a gourmet meal. In fact, in 2009 it was so wonderful that Anthony Bourdain proclaimed Philippine lechon ‘the best pig ever’!

There are two variations of lechon: the Manila and the Cebu styles. Manila lechon stuffs the pig with scallions, bay leaves, black peppercorn, garlic, salt, and lemongrass before cooking to create a spicier, more complex flavour that does not need to be seasoned after cooking. By contrast, Cebu lechon is stuffed with salt and pepper only, if it is stuffed at all. Instead, Manila lechon comes with a distinctive liver-based sauce, sometimes called ‘lechon sauce’, made mostly of mashed liver, vinegar, and brown sugar. This gives Manila lechon a much earthier flavour. While both cooking methods are unique, each when done right produces delicious mouth-watering pork that everyone would love.

If you’re interested in cooking some Filipino cuisine, take a look at our oriental supermarket online for some of our awesome foods! And if you have made any of these meals already, leave us a comment on social media and tell us your thoughts on these amazing meals.