Tuyo

Small, whole dried and salted fish, pan-fried until crisp — a breakfast staple whose intense saltiness is meant to contrast with something sweet, like champorado.

Tuyo is preserved the old way: heavily salted and dried in the sun until the moisture is mostly gone, which concentrates the flavor and lets it keep for weeks without refrigeration. Before frying, most cooks soak it briefly in water to soften and reduce some of the saltiness, though plenty of households skip that step and fry it straight from the package.

It's most famous as the salty counterpart to something sweet — a bowl of champorado eaten alongside fried tuyo is one of the most iconic Filipino breakfast pairings, the same sweet-and-salty logic behind pancakes and bacon.

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