Filipino-American cuisine facts for kids

Filipino American cuisine is the delicious food that Filipinos brought with them when they moved to America. For a long time, this flavorful, often meat-based and fried food was mostly enjoyed within Filipino communities. But recently, more and more people have discovered and fallen in love with it! Filipino food has a rich history of blending different food traditions, borrowing ideas from other cultures and making them their own.

When Filipinos first came to America, they shared their food through catering services and by opening popular restaurants like Jollibee, a famous food chain from the Philippines. Many different Filipino dishes now represent Filipino Americans and their unique food culture.

How Other Cultures Influenced Filipino Food

The Philippines was once ruled by Spain, Japan, and America. Because of this, Filipino food in the Philippines was greatly influenced by these cultures. Many popular Filipino dishes today show these influences. Experts say that the main tastes in Filipino cooking are salty, bitter, sour, and sweet.

Chinese and Japanese Flavors

Filipinos created their own dish called pancit, which is a type of noodle dish. This idea led to many different kinds of pancit. They even made it into soups like miki or sotanghon. They changed pancit based on the ingredients they had, making seafood versions or simpler, cheaper ones. China also helped create dishes like kekiam, siopao, and siomai, which are popular Filipino snacks and meals.

Spanish Flavors

When the Spanish arrived in the Philippines, they brought new ingredients. Filipinos soon started using these ingredients in their own dishes. For example, garlic became a very important ingredient, especially for fried foods.

American Flavors

American culture influenced Filipino food by turning some traditional meals into easy-to-cook frozen dishes. Companies like Marigold Commodities Corporation and Ditta Meat Food Service teamed up to create these frozen Filipino meals. They started in Austin, Texas, offering a few dishes that mixed American meats with Filipino flavors. This created a new kind of Filipino American food.

Types of American-Influenced Food

Four of these American-style Filipino dishes were first sold in Texas. One was beef tapa. This dish uses Texas beef marinated with garlic, citrus flavors, and soy sauce. You can grill or fry it. Another dish is pork longaniza, which is like a Filipino-style sausage. The last two dishes are called tocino, made with either chicken or pork meat.

Filipino Restaurants

Catering Services

Catering has always been a big part of Filipino restaurants. Many places, like Sunda in Chicago and Purple Yam in Brooklyn, continue this tradition. Catering is a great way for new Filipino restaurants to introduce their food and find new customers. Restaurants also sell popular Filipino dishes in large amounts, like lechon (roasted pig). After a restaurant becomes well-known through catering, they often open a regular sit-down place where customers can enjoy individual dishes.

Kinds of Filipino American Dishes

Filipino dishes come in many forms, like soups, meat dishes, drinks, and desserts. A typical Filipino American meal often includes a soup, ulam (any main dish), kanin (rice), a type of meat, fruits, and dipping sauces. Each type of food fits into its own category.

Let's talk about the soup section first. This section has many different soups. One example is Munnggo gisado masabaw. This soup starts with mung beans. Then, you can add your choice of protein, like pork or shrimp. Another soup is pancit molo, which is like a Filipino version of Chinese wonton soup.

Next are the meat dishes. Just like soups, there are many kinds of meat dishes. One famous dish is Adobo. You can make Adobo with either pork or chicken. After choosing your meat, you cook it with vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic. Adobo can be made in many different ways, with each family having its own special recipe.

For desserts, there's Suman, which is sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves. You can dip it in sugar to make it sweeter. Taho is another dessert made with a sweet syrup and boba pearls in a soft, jelly-like soybean material. These are just a few examples of the many delicious Filipino dishes!

Main Ingredients in Filipino Food

Rice

Rice is super important in Filipino cooking, whether it's food from the Philippines or Filipino American food. It's like how cereal is a common breakfast food for many people. Rice helps make flavors stronger, but it's used for much more than that. Rice can be used to make other Filipino dishes like puto and bibingka. Puto can be filled with meat or ube (a purple yam), made into cakes, or eaten with other Filipino meals. Both puto and bibingka are made by grinding rice into flour.

Rice is also used to make a sweet dessert called suman. Suman is sweet sticky rice wrapped in a coconut or banana leaf. There are so many ways rice is used in Filipino culture, not just as a side dish for meat.

Coconut

Just like rice, coconut is another key ingredient in Filipino dishes. It's called buko in the Philippines. You can find coconut in drinks, main dishes, or desserts. Some dishes are special to certain regions. For example, in Quezon, they make a dish with shrimp wrapped in a leaf, buko strips, and cook it in buko water. Another region cooks chicken and ginger inside a whole coconut. They even make noodles from coconut! The white inside of the coconut is used to make milk, ginataang (dishes cooked in coconut milk), and halo-halo (a popular dessert). Coconut is used a lot in Filipino cooking.

Filipino American Health

Food and Health

A study in 2012 looked at different Asian American groups in Southern California. It found that Filipino Americans reported having the highest body mass indexes (BMIs). This might be because after Filipinos moved to the U.S., their diets changed. They started eating more energy-rich and processed foods, and fewer fruits and vegetables.

These changes seem to have led to increased body weight and other health issues. Specifically, Filipino American diets showed an increase in milk and meat consumption, and less starchy food and snacks. This change in eating habits led to a higher calorie intake. The amount of calories, protein, and fat consumed almost doubled or even tripled for some.

Studies in the U.S. and Canada

A study in Canada looked at the health of average Filipino women, focusing on body size, eating habits, and health. Western culture often has ideas about what "healthy" looks like. The study found that eating rice was sometimes linked to being "fat," while watching fat and rice intake was linked to being thinner.