Filipino Cooking Classics | The Future Market

The Filipino pantry and flavour balance

In simple words

Filipino food plays with four tastes: sour like tamarind, salty like soy sauce, savoury like garlic and fish sauce, and a little sweet. Cooking it is like mixing paint: you add a bit of each until the colour looks right.

Key facts

Pantry basics: soy sauce, cane or white vinegar, fish sauce (patis), garlic, onions, bay leaves, whole black peppercorns, tamarind soup base or fresh tamarind, rice noodles (bihon), lumpia wrappers, jasmine or long-grain rice, and cooking oil.
Sour (asim): vinegar in adobo and tamarind in sinigang. Sour is a big part of many classic Filipino dishes.
Taste and adjust: add fish sauce or soy sauce a little at a time, taste with a clean spoon, and adjust at the end.
Allergens to know (see In your country below; Canada's priority food allergens include soy, wheat and triticale, fish, crustaceans and molluscs, peanuts, eggs, sesame and more):
Soy sauce contains soy, and many soy sauces also contain wheat. Check the label.
Fish sauce contains fish. Shrimp paste (bagoong alamang) contains crustaceans.
Lumpia filling often uses egg; kare-kare sauce uses peanuts.
When cooking for guests, ask about allergies and keep your ingredient labels to show them.

In your country

Health Canada's priority food allergens: eggs, milk, mustard, peanuts, crustaceans and molluscs, fish, sesame seeds, soy, sulphites, tree nuts, wheat and triticale.
Source: Health Canada, food allergies: www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutrition/food-safety/foo

US law lists 9 major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame (sesame added from 1 January 2023).
Source: FDA, Food allergies (major food allergens): www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/food-aller

DOH Administrative Order 2014-0030 (labels for prepackaged food) says these must always be declared, directly below the list of ingredients: cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oat, spelt and their hybrids); crustaceans; eggs; fish; peanuts and soybeans; milk and milk products (lactose included); tree nuts; sulphite at 10 mg/kg or more; and other ingredients the FDA adds. This is a rule for packaged food.
Source: DOH Administrative Order No. 2014-0030 (FDA site): www.fda.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Administrative-Order-No.-201

The national standard for pre-packaged food labels (GB 7718-2025, in force 16 March 2027) lists eight allergen groups to label when used as ingredients: cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, fish, eggs, peanuts, soybeans, milk and tree nuts.
Source: Quanzhou Market Supervision Administration (guidance on the national standard): scjgj.quanzhou.gov.cn/xxgk/zfxxgk/fdzdgknr/ywgz/202605/t20260507_32892

Nine items must be labelled on packaged food: shrimp, cashew nut, crab, walnut, wheat, buckwheat, egg, milk and peanut (cashew nut added on 1 April 2026). This rule is for packaged food sold by businesses, not for home cooks.
Source: CAA, Food allergy labelling handbook, April 2026 (Japanese): www.caa.go.jp/policies/policy/food_labeling/food_sanitation/allergy/as

The MFDS lists 19 items that must be declared, including eggs, milk, buckwheat, peanuts, soybeans, wheat, mackerel, crab, shrimp, pork, peach, tomato, walnuts, chicken, beef, squid, clams, sulfites and pine nut. The list changes, so use the MFDS's current one.
Source: MFDS English, food labelling (allergens): mfds.go.kr/eng/wpge/m_14/de011005l001.do

Step by step

Open your pantry and check for soy sauce, vinegar, fish sauce (patis), garlic, onions, bay leaves, peppercorns, tamarind soup base, rice noodles and lumpia wrappers.
Write a shopping list for what is missing.
Read the labels of soy sauce and fish sauce, and note the allergens: soy, wheat, fish and crustaceans (in shrimp paste).
Taste each main flavour on a clean spoon: salty, sour, savoury and a little sweet.
When you cook, add salty and sour ingredients a little at a time and taste at the end.
If cooking for guests, ask about allergies and keep the labels to show them.
Check: you can name which ingredient gives sour, salty and savoury in a dish.

Watch on YouTube

The Filipino pantry you can build from any regular grocery storeLola Rosa Cooks · YouTube · youtube.com

Videos by other creators on YouTube, for reference. They are not made by or affiliated with The Future Market.

LESSON 01The Filipino pantry and flavour balance

LESSON 01 / ANIMATED LESSON / AI VOICE00:00 / 01:00

Voice

Read the video script

[Host in front of a pantry shelf] "Filipino cooking starts with a few bottles: soy sauce, vinegar, fish sauce. Plus garlic, onions, bay leaves and pepper."
[Text on screen: Sour. Salty. Savoury. A little sweet.] "The magic is the balance: sour, salty, savoury and a little sweet."
[Host tasting with a clean spoon] "Season little by little and taste at the end."
[Text on screen: Soy. Wheat. Fish. Shellfish. Peanuts. Egg.] "And know your allergens. Soy sauce, fish sauce, shrimp paste and peanuts are common in Filipino dishes."

Try it now

Check your kitchen against the pantry list. Write your shopping list. Read the labels of your soy sauce and fish sauce and note which priority allergens they contain.

ClaudeStuck? Copy a ready-made prompt for Claude

Copy this, open Claude, paste it, and Claude will walk you through the lesson step by step.

For a grown-up: Claude is for adults (18+). Copy this, paste it into Claude, and use the answer to explain the lesson to your child.

I'm learning "Filipino Cooking Classics" on The Future Market. Lesson 1: "The Filipino pantry and flavour balance".

What the lesson teaches:
- Pantry basics: soy sauce, cane or white vinegar, fish sauce (patis), garlic, onions, bay leaves, whole black peppercorns, tamarind soup base or fresh tamarind, rice noodles (bihon), lumpia wrappers, jasmine or long-grain rice, and cooking oil.
- Sour (asim): vinegar in adobo and tamarind in sinigang. Sour is a big part of many classic Filipino dishes.
- Taste and adjust: add fish sauce or soy sauce a little at a time, taste with a clean spoon, and adjust at the end.
- Allergens to know (see In your country below; Canada's priority food allergens include soy, wheat and triticale, fish, crustaceans and molluscs, peanuts, eggs, sesame and more):
- Soy sauce contains soy, and many soy sauces also contain wheat. Check the label.
- Fish sauce contains fish. Shrimp paste (bagoong alamang) contains crustaceans.
- Lumpia filling often uses egg; kare-kare sauce uses peanuts.

The exercise I'm working on:
Check your kitchen against the pantry list. Write your shopping list. Read the labels of your soy sauce and fish sauce and note which priority allergens they contain.

I'm stuck. Please:
1. Explain the main idea in plain, simple words with one everyday example.
2. Walk me through the exercise one small step at a time. Ask me what I've done so far before giving the next step.
3. Don't just give me the final answer. Help me do it myself, and check my work when I share it.

I'm a parent helping my child (about 8 years old) with a lesson called "The Filipino pantry and flavour balance" from the course "Filipino Cooking Classics".

Here's what the lesson says:
Filipino food plays with four tastes: sour like tamarind, salty like soy sauce, savoury like garlic and fish sauce, and a little sweet. Cooking it is like mixing paint: you add a bit of each until the colour looks right.

The activity:
Check your kitchen against the pantry list. Write your shopping list. Read the labels of your soy sauce and fish sauce and note which priority allergens they contain.

Please explain this so an 8-year-old understands: short sentences, a fun everyday example, and no hard words.
Then give me 3 simple questions I can ask my child to check they understood, and a way to do the activity together, one tiny step at a time.

Open Claude

Sources

Health Canada, Common food allergens (priority food allergens): www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-allergies-intolerances/fo

My notes

I learned this