It’s finally soup season and I promised myself I’d update my chicken sopas recipe. I was taking photos of the plated dish by the windows trying to beat sunset and my daughter wanted to take photos too after I had finished.
Why is it called sopas, she asked?
“Because soup in Spanish is…”
“Sopa,” she finished for me, “not sopas.”
It turns out I don’t know the origin of the name of this chicken noodle soup.
But I do know that Filipino sopas is an adaptation of the American chicken noodle soup. It has been served by mothers, grandmothers, aunts and grand-aunts who came before me, and it was rarely absent from the Christmas table.
So ubiquitous and yet each version is somehow different — some include slices of canned Vienna sausage or even hotdog, some use spaghetti (broken into short pieces) instead of the more traditional elbow macaroni, and some have half-and-half in lieu of evaporated milk.
I still cook it but not exactly in the way cooks of generations past made it. I don’t start by boiling a whole chicken. That was how it was done generations ago. Boil a whole bird to create a good stock, scoop out the chicken, shred the meat, discard the bones, return the meat to the pot, add the rest of the ingredients and cook. Milk is added at the end.
That’s a lot of work. I have a short cut that yields equally, if not better, results. I keep chicken bone broth in the freezer. It’s a time saver because there’s no need to start from scratch when cooking dishes that require chicken broth. When making sopas, that also means I can use chicken fillets, rather than a whole bird, for the meat.
More Filipino chicken soup recipes
Boiled chicken and vegetable soup (Filipino nilagang manok)
Nilagang manok translates to boiled chicken. It’s the generic name for a wide array of rustic Filipino chicken and vegetable soups. What vegetable? Cabbage and potato combo is the most common. But, really, add whatever you like.
Chicken binakol
A rustic Filipino soup cooked by simmering chicken, ginger, shallots, garlic and lemongrass in coconut water seasoned with fish sauce. Tender coconut meat and spinach complete the dish.
Chicken tinola
Bone-in chicken, wedges of green papaya and chili leaves in gingered broth. That’s chicken tinola, Filipino comfort food par excellence. Serve as a soup and or main dish.
Chicken picadillo soup
Simple and rustic, this soup is quick and easy to make. Serve with buttered toast and it’s comfort food to the max.
