Why It Works
- Roasting the chicken bones and searing the meat triggers the Maillard reaction, building a deeper, richer broth.
- Cooking the soup’s components separately—broth, chicken, noodles, and vegetables—keeps their flavors bright and textures distinct.
I am a sucker for Filipino holiday feasts. I revel in the preparation—from collaborative lumpia-making marathons to day-long pig roasts to the day-of scramble to get the table ready just in time for Noche Buena, the traditional Christmas Eve midnight feast shared with family and friends —my favorite holiday among them. It takes a barangay (village) to pull this off.
At the center of the Noche Buena feast—surrounded by vibrant platters of fresh fruit, cured ham, cheeses, breads, and roasted and fried dishes—a humble noodle soup stands out: chicken sotanghon, which takes its name from the rice noodles (sontanghon) that are a crucial component of the dish. This seemingly simple soup, with its delicate garlicky amber broth enveloping glass noodles and slivers of chicken, mushrooms, and cabbage, carries within it the layered history of culinary influences that make Filipino food so distinctive.
Serious Eats / Lorena Masso
More than just another offering on the table, chicken sotanghon is a cornerstone of the Noche Buena tradition—a symbol of family, unity, and gratitude during the joyous holiday season. This is not a weeknight soup. It’s a labor of love—a slow, intentional process of coaxing deep flavor from roasted chicken bones and vegetable trimmings. The broth alone is worth the time it takes: rich, golden, and fragrant from garlic and the Maillard reaction that happens when you sear and roast the chicken before simmering. You could use a store-bought stock or skip roasting the bones, but it just wouldn’t be the same.
Building a broth from chicken bones and vegetable scraps ensures you extract every ounce of flavor and honor a zero-waste kitchen practice (something I’m passionate about). When cooking, save your vegetable peels and trimmings—carrot ends, celery tops, cabbage scraps, mushroom stems, and scallion roots—for flavoring the broth. (The broth keeps well frozen for future soups.) Collect and reserve the golden chicken fat that’s rendered during roasting—it adds incomparable depth when you sauté the aromatics. Cooking each component—the broth, vegetables, noodles, and aromatics—independently preserves their texture and freshness, resulting in a soup that feels fresh and vibrant even after freezing and reheating.
Serious Eats / Lorena Masso
Beyond its technique and flavor, chicken sotanghon also tells a story—a reflection of trade, adaptation, and the shared histories that shape Filipino cuisine. Chicken sotanghon is made with mung bean thread noodles, chicken, and your choice of vegetables—usually carrots, cabbage, and mushrooms—and a broth colored with annatto seeds. Historically, the mung bean thread noodles (sotanghon) were imported from China and prized as a luxury ingredient compared with the more common rice vermicelli. Their presence on the holiday table signified abundance and celebration. The dish itself reflects centuries of trade and exchange: noodles from China, annatto from the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade, and the Filipino genius for adaptation and hospitality.
Noodle dishes were introduced to the Filipino diet through trade between the Philippines and China during pre-colonial times. Sotanghon is derived from the Hokkien word suwatanghon (pronounced sua-tan-hun), meaning “small, wrinkly noodles,” which are opaque when raw and translucent when cooked. The use of annatto to color the broth was a product of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade during the Columbian Exchange. Every bowl is a celebration of that history and of the care that turns a humble chicken soup into the heart of a Filipino feast.
