I grew up in Chinatown, Honolulu, Hawaii. Where I lived, there was a melding of several different cultures: Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Caucasian and a few others. Along with learning about these different cultures and how they lived, I learned about their foods. I ate Filipino food a lot growing up and enjoy eating it.
Adobo means to stew, marinade, or season and is a Filipino dish that is very simple to make, yet is very tasty if you like vinegary dishes. Basically, it’s stewing your meat in a vinegar/soy sauce mixture that comes out tender and delicious due to the cooking process in the vinegar.
Other cultures have adobo too and each has different spices and methods of cooking their meat. The Filipino version is very easy to make and takes no time to cook.
Simple Chicken Adobo
4-5 lbs. chicken thighs (pork can also be used) ½ c. white vinegar
½ c. shoyu (soy sauce), I use wheat free tamari sauce
4 crushed garlic cloves
1 tsp. black peppercorns
3 bay leaves
Oil
Brown chicken on both sides in a large pot with some oil (I always like to brown my meat before stewing).
Combine the rest of the ingredients the rest in the pot along with the chicken. Cover and bring to a boil, then simmer for 1-3 hours stirring occasionally. Uncover and simmer until sauce is reduced and thickened, and chicken is tender, about 20 more minutes.
Serve with steamed rice - macaroni salad makes a nice side dish or serve your favorite salad. Add some of that sauce to your rice - it's really good. Save some chicken to make the fried rice recipe below.
You can also bake the chicken in the oven. It takes 45 minutes with less tending, and yields a different texture to the chicken:
- Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Line a 13 x 9 pan with foil that’s been sprayed with cooking oil.
- Put in your chicken (I take the skins off ½ of the chicken, you can take them all off).
- Pour in the vinegar/shoyu sauce mixture then add the other ingredients.
- Turn the chicken to coat well and place skin side down.
- Bake for 25 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and turn chicken over, then place back in the oven to bake for another 20 minutes.
- If you left some of the skin on, you can broil for about 3 minutes to get the skin nice and crispy.
Serve as above. Both methods make 6-8 servings.
While the adobo is cooking, cook your rice (make extra) and also make your salad - I made a broccoli, pea, and onion salad.
Usually when you make dishes that simmer in their own sauce or marinade, you end up with a lot of leftover sauce. Don’t throw it out - along with the flavor of the marinade, you now have extra flavor from the meat that was cooked in it. Even if you don't make the fried rice recipe, save the sauce - put it in a container and freeze it. You can use it the next time you make adobo or use it anytime you need a little bit of shoyu or want additional flavor in another meal. Here is a simple and flavorful recipe to make with the leftovers from your adobo.
Adobo Flavored Garlic Fried Rice
3 tb. oil
½ to 1 head garlic, peeled and diced
4 c. cooked rice, refrigerated overnight
Leftover adobo sauce (maybe 1/4 c.)
Leftover chicken, I had 2 and 1/2 pieces of chicken (chopped finely)
Frozen peas or mixed veggies
Rice from the frig will be clumped and hard, break it up so the grains are seperated and set aside. In a nonstick pan, heat oil over medium heat and gently brown garlic for about 30 seconds - also use the garlic you put in the sauce.
Add rice and mix thoroughly until rice is evenly coated, then add the chicken and a handful of peas and stir till combined and peas have thawed.
Pour in the adobo sauce (not too much, you want just enough to flavor everything - not drown it) - it'll be gelled from being cooked with the chicken.
Cook until heated through. If there is not enough sauce, make more - equal amounts of shoyu to vinegar. Serve warm with leftover salad.
**Note: these are not my recipes - they were retrieved from the Internet and adapted by me.**
Enjoy!
Comments or questions are always welcomed. I would love to hear what you think of this recipe or any of my other posts. Thanks!
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