Chicken Sopas Recipe | Panlasang Pinoy Recipes™ (2024)

We’re all out with this delicious creamy chicken macaroni soup recipe or sopas recipe for short. Most of the ingredients for this recipe are the traditional ones but ingredients I used here are a bit unconventional but trust me, it will add a layer of texture to the dish that I know everyone would love. This sopas recipe is what I grew up eating and it brought me plenty of warm memories when I was young.

You may notice with the title of this recipe, sopas and creamy chicken macaroni soup are interchanged. While sopas is a Filipino word that literally translates to soup, there is a staple Filipino dish that is primarily associated with the word sopas: creamy chicken macaroni soup. It’s the standard sopas in the Philippines that brought warmth and comfort to every Filipino during a cold rainy day.

So, while other Filipino dishes like sinigang or bulalo are categorized as sopas, a creamy chicken macaroni soup is the first Filipino recipe that comes to mind whenever the word sopas is brought up. It’s the ultimate comfort food in the Philippines, other than cold and rainy weather, eating sopas is reserved for whenever a family member is sick.

An earlier memory of mine was consuming sopas as a toddler on a day I got a high fever. Growing up, whenever a family member was sick, we always have sopas ready at the kitchen for that family member and for the whole family to consume. So when I moved out of my parents’ house and got my own place, the first time it rained I was struck with a feeling something missing.

There wasn’t a pot of sopas that’s ready to eat in the kitchen. I swear I could smell the dish’s delicious aroma during that cold rainy day. Of course, I quickly called my parents and asked for the family sopas recipe, determined to have a pot of it to eat whenever the next rainy day comes.

This is the exact sopas recipe that I first made while living alone for the first time. It got some slices of hot dog and boiled eggs which aren’t really traditional sopas ingredients but each household have their own recipe of sopas and everyone thinks that theirs is the best. I think mine is the best but fair enough.

Other ingredients for this creamy chicken macaroni soup is fairly typical of the traditional sopas recipe. We want it to be creamy so the evaporated milk cannot be excluded. Of course, the chicken bits and elbow macaroni is what make this recipe so beloved. The vegetables will add a healthy dimension to this recipe that makes it the preferred food of choice to serve to sick people.

But before we dive right into this delicious creamy chicken macaroni soup, let’s take a look at its origins first. The sopas that many Filipino came to love is an adapted version of the American chicken macaroni soup that was most likely brought to the Philippines during the American colonial period.

It may be obvious that the original macaroni soup came from Italy because of the use of macaroni pasta, what we know commonly as elbow macaroni. In Italy, macaroni soup is a poor man’s dish that was originally served to miners and is renowned for the health benefits it can bring. It’s also a fairly versatile dish that can use weeds in the recipe. It’s quite cheap as well which probably how it gained worldwide popularity.

Like other pasta dishes, the macaroni soup probably came to the United States during the first world war and gained massive popularity after that time period. Today, there are multiple versions of macaroni soup all over the world with different countries giving a unique twist to the dish.

Here in the Philippines, our macaroni soup, most commonly known as sopas, traditionally has a creamy consistency and is served with a choice of meat. So without further ado, we’re here to share our creamy chicken macaroni soup which I’m everyone who tried will enjoy. We’ve listed all the ingredients we’ve used down below as well as the cooking instructions.

For visual learners, we’ve created a fun video for you to learn the recipe. The video includes all the information you need to know to cook this recipe including the ingredients and the step by step guide of the cooking process. This recipe requires a fair bit of preparation but the end result is worth it, especially for a rainy day. Enjoy!