Top 10 Filipino Christmas Food

The Filipino Christmas is the longest in the world. It brings the Filipino value of being family-oriented to the fore as families gather to partake of the Christmas feast over laughter, storytelling and love. Food favorites are prepared and family secret recipes are shared.

Here’s a list of the all-time Noche Buena favorites.

***Lechon***
Roasted pig, roasted belly of pork, chicken, fish… anything that’s roasted over coals. You name it… it is going to be a part of the Christmas feast.

***Barbecue***
Pork and chicken

***Bibingka and Puto Bumbong***
Bibingka or rice cake and the iconic purple of puto bumbong are Filipino delicacies

***Fruit Salad***
Fresh or canned, the fruits that are mixed with the cream and condensed milk

***Hamonado***
Hamonado is pork or chicken cooked in pineapple juice.

***Lumpiang Ubod***
Spring rolls that are made from the heart of the coconut (ubod). Mixed with carrots, ground pork, lettuce then wrapped in lumpia.

***Leche Flan***
Just mix egg yolks, condensed milk, fresh milk and sugar, steam then top with caramelized sugar then voila!

***Spaghetti***
Filipino style spaghetti is tomato sauce and paste, ground beef or pork, cheese and a little sugar to have that sweet taste. It is a Filipino staple in parties and on Christmas

***Tsokolate***
If people in cold countries have eggnog to warm them up on Christmas, Filipinos love warming up with a hot cup of tsokolate or chocolate, be it commercial powder or tableya (the native chocolate)

***Macaroni Salad***
This pasta is paired with mayonnaise and chicken strips to make chicken macaroni salad. For macaroni fruit salad, it is paired with canned fruits.

***Quezo de Bola***
Is a semi-hard cheese from the Netherlands called Edam. Shaped like a ball and coated with red paraffin wax. It is paired with white wine and cold cuts. After Christmas, the cheese is added to a lot of dishes.

***Sotanghon Soup***
Sotanghon noodles are symbols of long life and the warmth that the hot soup provides during the cold Christmas breeze, make the Noche Buena complete

Bagong taon, bagong buhay. New Year, new life.

Each New Year’s, revelers around the world chow down on specific foods to summon good luck for the next 365 days. While some traditions call for noodles and others call for fruit, all the edibles connote forward movement, prosperity and health. Whether or not you're superstitious, take a look at our list of common celebratory eats.

1: Long Noodles
- signify longevity, on New Year’s Day. Since the noodles are never to be broken or shortened during the cooking process, the typical preparation for “Long-Life Noodles” is a stir-fry.

2: Pork
-pigs symbolize progress. Some say it’s because these animals never move backward, while others believe it’s all in their feeding habits

3: Round Fruits
- their shape, which looks like a coin, and their sweetness are the common denominators.

4: Whole Fish
-According to Doris Lum, a Chinese cuisine expert, the Chinese word for “fish” sounds like the word for “abundance,” one of the many reasons fish has become a go-to good luck food. Also, Rosemary Gong writes in Good Luck Life, her book on Chinese celebrations, that it’s important for the fish be served with the head and tail intact to ensure a good year, from start to finish.

5: Green leafy veggies
-including kale, collards and cabbage—on New Year’s Day because of their color and appearance, which resembles paper cash. Belief has it, the more you eat, the more prosperous you’ll be (and the healthier, too!).

6: Beans
-Beans, like greens, resemble money. More specifically, they symbolize coins. Whether you choose black beans, lentils or black-eyes peas.

7: Cakes and Sweets Cakes and other baked goods
- especially round or ring-shaped items, are commonly served from Christmas to New Year's around the world.In the Philippines, popular round cakes and sweets are ensaimada, doughnuts, monay, puto seko, small puto, kutsinta and small leche flan.

Luck is associated with food that’s round (the shape of coins), yellow or orange (the color of gold), green (the color of paper money), fish (symbol of bounty), pork (prosperity), legumes (coin-like seeds that expand like wealth) and cakes (sweetness is richness).