Laswa is easily one of the country’s healthiest, most delicious, most accessible, more affordable, and least challenging vegetable dish soups to prepare.
Originally from Iloilo, this Filipino soup dish is made up of heaps of vegetables, with flavors harmoniously creating its signature taste and aroma. Some of the ingredients in laswa include eggplant, malunggay, patola, string beans, and tomato. But must-have veggies include saluyot, okra, kalabasa, and alugbati or kulitis.
Making laswa is a relatively easy and pretty straightforward endeavor. It mainly involves boiling the vegetables in water until they are cooked. Most people like to keep their veggies half-cooked so they would retain their crunch.
It’s a pretty healthy dish, too, because, aside from the veggies, there’s nothing else in there. It is seasoned mostly with salt. This is one of the things that separates laswa from similar dishes such as dinengdeng from Ilocos and bulanglang from Batangas. Dinengdeng is seasoned with bagoong isda (as opposed to laswa’s salt). Bulanglang, on the other hand, uses rice wash (as opposed to laswa’s plain water).
The way these dishes are cooked and the way they taste, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that laswa, dinengdeng, and bulanglang are essentially the same dish of vegetable stew, but with regional variations. Kind of like how adobo and humba or bulalo and kansi are almost similar, but with just enough differences to stand on their own.
As there are no complicated cooking method or ingredient involved in making the dish, laswa is a relatively inexpensive soup to make. As low as P200, one would be able to make the dish that is good for three to four people.
As mentioned, laswa is perhaps one of the most customizable veggie soups. People can literally add more of their favorite veggies to their liking or those that are in season. Personally, the more tomato in the dish for me, the better. Some people like to add Knorr cubes, too, for more flavor.
Perhaps the most important non-vegetable ingredient in the dish is the shrimp, which gives laswa that sea-fresh flavor. Alternatively, people can use practically any type of fried fish for added taste. Pro tip: If you have leftover fried fish, feel free to use those.
If you happen to be in Makati, there’s a restaurant called Doy’s Inasal (right beside Goto Monster, near Shopwise Makati), which serves a wicked laswa. Always made-to-order so it’s served piping hot in a nice palayok.