Tinolang Manok (Chicken Tinola)

Tinolang Manok is the ultimate comfort food! Made of chicken, green papaya, fresh spinach, and ginger-flavored broth, this Filipino soup is hearty, healthy, and tasty.

How amazing it is to be human. The things we disregard, the things we hold dear, the things we remember. I am now a forty-two-year-old woman who has gone through life and seen too much of life, and yet, every time I cook a pot of tinolang manok, a memory from an already distant past can still grip my heart and tear it apart.

I was five years old when my parents separated, and soon after, my father began another family. On one of the rare occasions we did visit him, my brothers, my father, his new wife, and his then 2-year-old son gathered around the table for a lunch of chicken tinola.

In the Philippines, or at least in our household, all edible parts of the fowl~liver, gizzards, neck, and all, are used in the soup. As there is only ONE liver, considered the most nutritious, it's usually given to the precious child of the house. When my father ladled our portions of the soup, I reached out for my bowl with a certainty that only comes from the naivety of a child that THE liver was in mine. Instead, my father, cooing as he did, plopped the coveted piece into his boy's.

I was too young then to explain the onslaught of tears, to even understand what I was crying about. All I remember was the desperate need to be back home at my mother's house, my mother's house, where I would have been the ONE with the liver in her bowl.

How to serve

Tinola is traditionally served as a main dish for lunch or dinner. It's common to partake of the dish with steamed rice and fish sauce as a condiment on the side.

Storing leftovers

• To store, transfer in a container with a tight-fitting lid and refrigerate for 3 days or freeze for up to 2 months.
• To reheat, place in a saucepan and cook to an internal temperature of 165 F.