Last week, my entire household came down with the flu. We were tired, achy, and in need of some good old comfort food. And for us, that is sinigang, a Filipino soup that is sour and salty and filled with tender pork and hearty vegetables.

I love using my crockpot to make this soup because it requires very little preparation (which is a relief since I used to spend hours checking on a simmering pot of soup). Here I also provide a list of substitutions because not all the ingredients are easy to find in North America.

I made a short video to show exactly how I made this soup, with a few cameos from my kids of course.

There are three keys to a good sinigang: broth, meat, and vegetables.

Ingredients

• Fish sauce (or salt)
• Sinigang packet mix (Mama Sita)
• 1 tomato
• 1 onion
• 1 lb pork belly
• 1 lb pork stew cubes
• chinese long beans
• spinach
• daikon

1. Chop tomato and quarter the onion. Put in the slow cooker with cubed pork belly and stewing pork. Cover with water
2. Cook in the slow cooker for 6 hours on low or 4 hours on high.
3. Stir in chopped daikon (quarter rounds) and long beans (1 inch). Add soup mix (or lemon or tamarind paste)
4. Cook for another hour
5. Stir in spinach and adjust seasoning. Simmer 5 minutes.
6. Serve with rice.