Lomi Recipe

Tasty and hearty egg-noodle dish with a rich and thick soup brimming with flavorful toppings. Pancit Lomi is a classic Filipino comfort food that is perfect for cold, gloomy, or rainy days. It will not only fill your belly but also warm you up from head to toe!

What is Pancit Lomi?

Pancit Lomi is a Filipino noodle soup made mainly with thick fresh egg noodles, meat, and vegetables in a thickened broth. Several regional variations exist using different meat and vegetable choices. The most popular one though is the Batangas Lomi.

The main difference, you will easily see, is the amount of the toppings they put on their lomi. Batangas Lomi is also normally meatier giving lesser attention to adding vegetables in their soup. This is my easy and simple version of Batangas Lomi recipe.

Origin of Lomi

Pancit Lomi is known to have originated in Batangas, a coastal province south of Luzon, where the first lomi house or lomian was built. Just like some Philippine noodle dishes that we enjoy nowadays, such as Pancit Bihon and Pancit Canton, Lomi was also inspired by a Chinese dish. This dish is called Lor Mee, a Hokkien noodle dish swimming in a flavorful thick gravy with fish cakes, dumplings, and hard-boiled eggs as toppings.

With the ingenuity of the Filipinos, they made their version which includes pork meat and liver, vegetables, and eggs, with a rich broth thickened by cornstarch. It was such a delicious dish that variations of it popped out everywhere. The recipe was passed down from one household to another, region to another region until it became quite an ensemble of hearty toppings and seasonings that we now know.

Difference between Lomi and Mami

While these two are considered to be quintessential rainy day dishes, they are quite different from each other. Here are a few key differences:

Noodles - While both dishes use egg noodles, Mami uses thinner ones and Lomi uses thicker noodles. Lomi noodles are known for their signature chewy texture, which is a result of being soaked in lye water.

Meat - Mami is usually cooked with pork, beef, or chicken as the main ingredients. On the other hand, Lomi is made with combination of various toppings such as chicken or pork liver, kikiam, fish or squid balls, thin pork slices, or cracklings.

Broth Consistency - The broth of Mami is thin and clear, while Lomi's broth is thickened with cornstarch until it turns into almost a thick gravy.

Ingredients for Lomi Batangas

• Meat and Poultry- this recipe uses thinly sliced pork belly, squid balls or kikiam, pork liver, and eggs. Raw beaten eggs were used to thicken the broth further and hard-boiled eggs as toppings. Feel free to add your choice of toppings like chicken meat or gizzard, cracklings, and even shrimp.
• Vegetables- aside from the aromatics like garlic and onion, I also used carrots, cabbage, and spring onions.
• Noodles- of course, Lomi is not Lomi unless you use fresh thick egg noodles!
• Seasonings- Salt, soy sauce and fish sauce were used to flavor this dish.
• Liquids- I used pork broth as the base for the soup. Water is also used to boil the pork belly to render the fats and also for the cornstarch slurry.
• Thickener- cornstarch was used to achieve the perfect broth consistency for this recipe! A good alternative is cassava or potato starch.

Tips in cooking Pancit Lomi

• Once you add the cornstarch slurry, make sure to regularly stir to prevent lumps from forming. You also need to lower the heat and bring it down to a simmer to get a thick and glossy finish.
• Add the beaten eggs slowly in a thin stream while stirring regularly.
• The broth will thicken more as it cools, so do not leave it too long in the hot pot.
• Once the broth has slightly thickened, turn off the heat as you might overcook the cornstarch which might result to thinning out the broth.
• When cooking the liver, remove from heat once the edges turn brown. Do not overcook, or they will turn tough and chewy.

How to Serve and Store

Serve Pancit Lomi while steaming hot as a satisfying meal or even as midday snack. Serve with soy sauce with calamansi and chili on the side.

Allow Pancit Lomi to completely cool before storing. Transfer to a container with a tight-fitting lid and refrigerate to up to 3 days.

To reheat, you may either pop it in a microwave or on a stovetop over low-medium heat. Add a bit of pork broth or water as needed.

More Tasty Noodle Soup Dishes

Recipe Video