A Filipino chicken soup brimming with chewy glass noodles

Nothing hits the spot like a warming bowl of my mum's chicken sotanghon, a Filipino soup with a vibrant orange broth and chewy glass noodles.

Filipino chicken sotanghon. Source: Melissa Fox

When the colder months arrive, nothing hits the spot for me more like a warming bowl of my mum's chicken sotanghon. It's a homestyle Filipino chicken soup with a vibrant orange broth and chewy glass noodles. 

When mum cooked this dish during my childhood, it would fill our kitchen with aromas of fried onion and garlic. The scent ignited my appetite every time, and made me curious about what she was cooking.  

Sotanghon has a simple broth but our recipe has been passed down through generations in our family and it's full of heart. While my mum was cooking this dish, she'd tell me how her mum would make this soup for her, how it made her feel comforted, how she makes it similarly and that she learnt to make it just by watching. I did the same: I loved to watch my mum cook, and I learnt by example. 

Filipino chicken sotanghon features transparent chewy noodles. Source: Melissa Fox

She'd make the broth first. She'd boil a pot of water, reduce the heat and add the chicken and a bay leaf. She always said the broth was better when the chicken was on the bone because it had more flavour. After she added the chicken and bay leaf, she brought the water back to boil and then reduced the heat again. Then she'd let it simmer to give the flavours time to develop. 

Once the chicken was cooked, she removed the bay leaf and put the chicken on a chopping board. She quickly extracted the chicken meat by shredding it vigorously with two forks; the meat was soft and fell apart from the bone without resistance. I was impressed by her chicken shredding skills, she had obviously done it many times before. 

While the broth was simmering, she prepared the other ingredients. She chopped the onion, minced the garlic, diced the celery and sliced the carrot into fine sticks so they cooked quickly. In a separate pan, she fried the vegetables and shredded chicken with a drizzle of canola oil until they were browned. She added these ingredients back into the pot with the broth with a chicken stock cube to enhance the chicken flavour.

Every time I eat this soup at home it not only warms my body, I find the family memories warming to my soul.

Many of my childhood memories of eating this dish are of sitting around the family table with my extended family with a giant pot of soup in the middle from which we would serve ourselves and take as much as we could eat. The way the glassy noodles swirled around in the vibrant orange broth, entangled with bits of shredded chicken, made me smile before I even started eating it. This homely soup was a feel-good family meal and we always went back for seconds.

Many types of noodles can be used for this dish but it's important that the noodles be chewy in texture and transparent so that they glisten in the broth. We usually cook sotanghon with vermicelli noodles or glass noodles, which are also referred to as cellophane noodles because of their translucent appearance.

Achuete powder gives the broth the vibrant orange colour. Source: Melissa Fox

As a child, I was fascinated by the bright orange colour of the broth. I watched with wonder at the clear noodles and chicken stained orange with achuete or annatto seeds (also called achiote seeds, among other variations). When we use achuete powder, we dilute it in hot water to get the lumps out before adding it to the broth. If we use the seeds, we soak them in hot water and filter them out before adding the dyed liquid to the broth. The colour is a defining characteristic of sotanghon and is a good way to identify the dish when you're perusing food stalls in the Philippines.

Sotanghon has a simple broth but our recipe has been passed down through generations in our family and it's full of heart.

There are so many variations of chicken noodle soup and there's even many iterations of this particular dish, but my mum's recipe is the one that I love to cook. Every time I eat this soup at home, it not only warms my body, the family memories warm my soul.

 

Love the story? Follow the author here: Twitter @olivesundays, Facebook @olivesundays, Instagram @olivesundays. Photographs by Melissa Fox. Photography by Melissa Fox. Styling by Melissa Fox. Food preparation by Melissa Fox.

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Filipino chicken sotanghon

Chicken sotanghon is a Filipino chicken noodle soup with a vibrant orange broth and chewy glass noodles. 

Serves 4  

Ingredients 

• 400 g chicken with bone (maryland)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1.5 L water
• 1 tbsp canola oil
• ½ onion
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• ½ stalk celery
• 1 chicken stock cube
• 150 g vermicelli noodles
• ½ carrot
• 1 tbsp achuete powder 
• ¼ tbsp fish sauce (or to taste)
• 1 tsp spring onion to garnish 

Method 

1. In a large pot over high heat, add the chicken, bay leaf and 1.5 litres of water. Bring to boil then simmer for 30 minutes. 
2. Remove bay leaf from pot and set aside the broth. Shred the chicken meat, discarding the bone.
3. In a medium frying pan over medium heat, add canola oil and fry onions for 3 minutes or until transparent. Add garlic and celery and cook for 2 minutes. Add shredded chicken and cook for a further 2 minutes.
4. Add the cooked onion, garlic, celery and chicken to the pot of broth and bring to boil.
5. Add chicken stock cube, vermicelli noodles and carrot. Cook for 5 minutes.
6. In a small bowl, add achuete powder to 3 tbsp of water and stir to remove lumps. Add mixture to the pot. 
7. Add fish sauce to taste and garnish with spring onion.