Send this recipe to your friend who hates tinola.
Some people don't like chicken tinola, calling it a flavorless, watery chicken soup. We don't like to judge, but that doesn't sound like a proper tinola at all! This Filipino household staple should be comforting and restorative: tender chicken cuts and in a clean, gingery soup.
Cook chicken: Combine the chicken, red onion, garlic, and ginger in a Dutch oven or deep pot. Cover with 2 liters of water. Turn heat on to medium-high and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the chicken is almost tender. For a clearer soup, skim the foam off the top of the broth.
Cook vegetables: Add sayote and bring the pot back up to a boil. Cook for 10-15 minutes or until sayote is fork-tender. Turn the heat off and stir in the bouillon cubes and dahon ng sili. Stir until the cubes are well dissolved and the dahon ng sili are wilted.
Serve: Serve hot with steamed rice, with a side of patis (fish sauce) if desired.
Using a whole chicken gives the broth a wholesome and pronounced chicken flavor. Using just one part of the chicken can affect the taste and quality of the soup. For example, a chicken breast tinola will lack flavor and body; a chicken thigh tinola will have a one-dimensional taste.
At the supermarket, go to the poultry section and ask for a whole chicken cut for tinola (or tinola cut). This will give you good-sized pieces that will cook faster and more evenly than a whole chicken.
A trick for clear tinola soup is to cut your aromatics into big chunks. Minced aromatics yield a cloudy soup.
While cooking the chicken, skim off any scum that boils to the top of the soup. Here's a hack: Fold a thick paper towel into four, then gently swipe it across the top of the soup. A good chunk of the scum will stick to the tissue. After that, you can easily scoop out the rest with a spoon or flat sieve.
A debate as old as time: papaya or sayote?
Green papaya is what most households use because it's easier to prepare than sayote. It also has a sweetness to it that transforms the soup—though we take this as a bad thing. Papaya can overpower the flavor of the tinola, making it taste less gingery and chicken-y.
Sayote needs some preparation before use—you need to milk it, otherwise you’ll end up with a cloudy soup. But we prefer it simply because its sweetness is more subtle than papaya's. You get all the chicken-y flavors of the soup plus soft, slightly sweet bites of sayote.
In summary: We're Team Sayote, but feel free to use papaya!
You can use labanos, or white daikon radish. Or use green papaya!
You can use malunggay (moringa), spinach, and watercress. A combination of these vegetables will work wonderfully, too.
