Kitchen

Rainy Day Favorites: 7 Soups That Feel Like Home

by Alexa Villano
July 22, 2025

Craving for something hot and homey during the rainy season? Check out these soup ideas

One of the best foods to have on a cold, rainy day is soup. Having soup is not just the start of a meal – it’s comforting and homey for many.

In the Philippines, we have different types of soups from different regions and have adopted ideas from other countries. Whether it be vegetable soup, congee, samgyetang, or macaroni soup, it will always be part of the meal.

Here are seven soups to try, which are easy to do thanks to the many recipes available online.

Craving for something hot and homey during the rainy season? Check out these soup ideas

Sinigang

One of the staple soups in every Filipino household is sinigang. Just choose your favorite meat or seafood, tamarind mix, and vegetables, and you are ready to go.

Some of the sinigang recipes include:

Sinigang na baboy
Sinigang na baka
Sinigang na bangus
Sinigang na hipon
Sinigang na salmon

Vegetables that are always part of sinigang are:

Kangkong
Okra
Labanos
Eggplant
Mustasa (often part of Sinigang na salmon)

Sinigang has always been a comfort soup, not only because it’s easy to make, but you can tweak it to your preferences. Take the cast of sinigang na salmon. Salmon is not a fish often seen in the country, but thanks to Filipinos abroad who have salmon as part of their diet, it’s now being exported and adapted in Filipino restaurants and homes to eat.

Nilaga

Another versatile soup dish among Filipinos, Nilaga was once always beef-based. But thanks to the creative minds of many cooks, one can now use chicken and pork as a main ingredient.

Some of the vegetables often found in nilaga include:

Pechay
Beans
Potatoes

Batchoy

Thanks to our brothers and sisters from the Iloilo region, batchoy has become very popular among Filipinos. One of the most popular batchoys is from the district of La Paz, hence the name La Paz batchoy.

Batchoy is a noodle-based soup that includes pork offal, pork crunches, chicken stock, a bit of beef, and round noodles. Restaurants like Chicken Bacolod and JT’s Manukan have their versions for those who cannot go to Iloilo to try authentic batchoy.

Molo

Another famous soup-based dish from Iloilo is Molo, named after the city of Molo. The wontons have pork and shrimp inside as a filling. Sometimes, the wontons are shredded into chicken bits.

Molo is one of the easiest to make because aside from the wanton, you use chicken broth and chicken meat as a base for the soup. Add some toasted garlic to it, and it makes you feel warm inside when you sip it.

Sinampalukan

Sinampalukan is a sour broth-based dish with chicken as its main meat. These days, cooks and chefs also use fish as a protein source.

Aside from the sampalok or tamarind, green chili or sili pangsigang is a component of the Sinampalukan.

Kansi

Kansi or Cansi is another dish from Iloilo and has spread throughout the Western Visayas region. Its recipe is a combination of bulalo and sinigang because of the ingredients.

Beef is the main protein of Kansi, and some of its ingredients include unripe jackfruit, chili, and lemongrass.

KBL or Kadios, Baboy, and Langka also have similar taste to that of Kansi, except they’re made of other proteins.

Misua

Misua, aside from sotanghon soup, is a popular noodle soup dish because of its versatility. While it’s Chinese in origin, it has become a staple in Philippine cuisine. Favorite ingredients to include with misua are patola, ground beef/pork, and shrimp.