About this recipe
Chicken and pork braised in vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, bay and cracked peppercorns until the meat is tender and the liquid has reduced to a dark, glossy, sharply savoury sauce. This soy-and-vinegar version is the one most widely met outside the Philippines, and it is one member of a large family: adobong puti uses vinegar and no soy, adobo sa gata finishes in coconut milk, adobong dilaw takes its colour from turmeric, and many households keep reducing until the meat fries in its own rendered fat. It shares a name with the Spanish and Mexican adobo, which is a chile-based marinade paste and a different thing entirely; how the name came to attach here is logged for verification.
Recipe facts
- Yield
- 6 servings with rice
- Prep
- 20 minutes (plus 1 hour marinating)
- Cook
- 1 hour
- Total
- 140 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Spice
- Mild
Allergens Contains soy and wheat (soy sauce). Not gluten-free unless a wheat-free soy sauce is used.
Development draft. This is an untested development recipe from the cookbook project. It has not been kitchen-tested, and the quantities and timings are the author’s working draft rather than a verified result.
Ingredients
The braise
- 1 1/2 lb (680 g) bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks
- 1 1/2 lb (680 g) pork belly or pork shoulder, cut into 1 1/2 in (4 cm) pieces
- 3/4 cup (180 ml) cane vinegar
- 1/2 cup (120 ml) soy sauce
- 1 cup (240 ml) water
- 1 whole head garlic (about 12 cloves), peeled and lightly crushed
- 4 dried bay leaves
- 1 tbsp (7 g) whole black peppercorns, cracked
- 1 tbsp (12 g) brown sugar (optional, for a rounder finish)
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) neutral oil
To serve
- Steamed rice
- 2 scallions, sliced thin (optional)
Equipment
- Heavy pot or Dutch oven, at least 5 qt (5 L)
- Tongs
- Wide skillet, if you finish by frying
Method
- Combine the chicken and pork with the soy sauce, crushed garlic, bay leaves and cracked peppercorns in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour, or overnight.
- Tip the meat and all the marinade into the pot. Add the cane vinegar and the water. The liquid should come roughly halfway up the meat.
- Bring to a boil over medium-high heat UNCOVERED and do not stir for the first 5 minutes — this lets the raw edge of the vinegar cook off. The kitchen will smell sharp at first and then settle.
- Lower the heat to a bare simmer, cover partly, and cook 45 minutes, turning the pieces two or three times, until the pork is tender enough to give under a spoon and the chicken pulls easily from the bone.
- Lift out the meat with tongs. Add the brown sugar if using, raise the heat and boil the liquid uncovered 8-12 minutes, until it has reduced by about half and coats a spoon. Discard the bay leaves.
- Optional, and common: heat the neutral oil in the wide skillet over medium-high and brown the drained meat on all sides, 4-6 minutes, until the edges crisp and darken. Otherwise skip the oil entirely.
- Return the meat to the reduced sauce, turn to coat, and simmer 2 minutes more to bring it back to temperature.
- Serve hot with steamed rice, scattered with scallions if you like.
From the foundations
The book pairs this recipe with the following, from the sauces, sambals and pastes that open the collection.
The Complete Edition
Chicken & Pork Adobo sits in the Philippines chapter
The book carries this recipe in full alongside the rest of the Philippines chapter, the pastes and dips it is built on, and the twenty-seven pantry studies that open the collection.
In review with Amazon KDP
Both editions have been submitted to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and are currently in review. Submitted prices are $9.99 for the kindle edition and $49.99 for the paperback. Neither is on sale yet, and prices are as submitted rather than final.