Easy Sopas Recipe (Filipino Chicken Noodle Soup) (2024)

FAQs

What is sopas in the Philippines? ›

The name simply means "soup" in Tagalog, from Spanish sopa ("soup").

For virtually anything but the brothy bois, like chicken noodle soup or Italian minestrone, you could also stir in some coconut milk, warmed cream, or crème fraîche to add body and richness.

Add Umami: Add a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, mushroom powder, or a few dashes of fish sauce for an ultra-satisfying, umami-packed soup. Add More Veggies: Swirl in fresh spinach or kale at the end of cooking for more of a vegetable-heavy soup.

Add Flour Or Cornstarch

Instead, ladle a small amount of broth into a separate bowl and let it cool. Add a few tablespoons of flour or cornstarch to the bowl and whisk until it's blended smooth. Next, bring the soup to a simmer and add the mixture back to the pot. Pro tip: Don't dump in the entire mixture at once.

In the Philippines, a common macaroni soup is known simply as sopas ('soup' in Tagalog). It originated from the American chicken noodle soup. It is made with macaroni, various vegetables and meat (usually chicken), with added evaporated milk.

Although the Philippines has many popular soup dishes, sinigang is a Pinoy favorite, loved for its distinct sour taste. Sinigang can be made with pork, chicken, or shrimp and includes vegetables such as spinach, cabbage, green beans, and bok choy.

Add peppercorns, bay leaves, thyme, poultry seasoning, basil, and parsley.

→ Follow this tip: Adding noodles to the soup should be the very last thing you do before taking the pot off the heat. Wait until the soup is just about finished, mix in the noodles, and simmer until the noodles are about halfway cooked.

The salt and seasonings in soup are flavor enhancers that tantalize your taste buds more than plain water can. That may be one of the reasons soup is effective—you're likely to keep eating it. What's more, seasonings provide medicinal value as well.

Vinegar, much like salt, is a flavor enhancer — it not only imparts its own taste and acidity to a soup, but in small quantities, it helps to bring out the brightness of other ingredients as well.

Why do you put lemon juice in chicken soup? ›

Lemons are a chicken soup game changer. Why? They brighten up and balance the salty, rich flavors of the dish, and make all of the ingredients come into line. Like a vinaigrette on a salad, the pickle on a burger, and the sour cream in a coffee cake, a squeeze of lemon gives chicken soup a game-changing brightness.

Adding umami-rich ingredients like tomato paste or a parmesan rind to the soup will add a deep, rich savoriness and body to the soup.

Again, just don't add too much water. If the soup does taste watery, keep it on a low boil for a while and let some of the water boil away.

The most classic and surefire way to thicken a broth-based soup is with a cornstarch slurry. Whisk together equal parts cornstarch (or arrowroot) and water or broth, then whisk it into the pot of soup. A good ratio to get to a pleasant thickness without your soup tasting goopy or heavy is one tablespoon.

Cornstarch, or corn flour, can be used to thicken soup through its high starch content. Cornstarch is a great thickener for soup because only a little bit is needed to significantly thicken a soup, and it will not affect the flavor profile of the soup.

Sopas, which literally means soup, is a staple in Filipino cuisine. But although there are many dishes we can classify as sopas, such as pancit lomi and chicken sotanghon, it is most commonly associated with a soup made of elbow macaroni, vegetables, and milk-infused broth.

Caldo refers to the liquid resulting from the boiling of the meat and sopa includes the meat, vegetables and trimmings.

"Sopa" is a noun which is often translated as "soup", and "caldo" is a noun which is often translated as "broth".

Three iconic Filipino soups have been rated as some of the world's best Meat Soups, according to the TasteAtlas rankings. These soups are Sinigang na Baboy, Bulalo, and Tinolang Manok.