Chicken Adobo

Name: Chicken Adobo
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Filipino
Ingredients: 900 g (2 lbs) Chicken, cut into serving pieces; 4 tbsp Soy sauce; 4.5 tbsp White vinegar; 10 cloves Garlic, crushed; 360 ml (1.5 cups) Water; 4 tbsp Cooking oil; 1 tsp Sugar; 1 tsp Whole peppercorns; 3 Dried bay leaves; Salt

The Philippines' national braise, and possibly the best four-ingredient dish in the world: soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and peppercorns, simmered with chicken until the sauce turns glossy and salty-sour. One pot, no technique, no substitutions needed.

Nguồn

Công thức của Vanjo Merano · 📱 Influencer · Vanjo Merano — Filipino food writer behind Panlasang Pinoy, the largest Filipino recipe site

Tên của các đầu bếp và nhà sáng tạo chỉ xuất hiện để ghi nguồn. More Recipes Please hoạt động độc lập, không liên kết, không được họ chứng thực hay tài trợ.

Panlasang Pinoy (Vanjo Merano) — Vanjo Merano's published chicken adobo. The name is Spanish — from adobar, 'to marinate' — but the method is not: cooking meat in vinegar and salt was already standard in the archipelago before the Spanish arrived, and they simply recorded it in 1613 as 'adobo de los naturales', the adobo of the native people.

Đầu bếp: Vanjo Merano

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⏱ 60 phút🍽 4 khẩu phần🔥 646 kcal🇵🇭 Philippines

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Các bước

Put the chicken in a bowl with the soy sauce and crushed garlic, turn it over a few times, and leave it in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
💡 This is the only waiting in the whole recipe, and it is doing real work — the soy penetrates the meat instead of just coating it. Overnight is even better. Do not add the vinegar yet.
Heat the oil in a pot over medium heat. Lift the chicken out of the marinade — keep the marinade — and brown the pieces for about 2 minutes a side.
💡 Shake off the drips before the chicken hits the oil — wet soy sauce spits violently. You are after colour, not cooked-through; it finishes in the simmer.
Pour in the reserved marinade and the water, then add the peppercorns and bay leaves. Bring it to a boil, turn the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.
Pour in the vinegar and let it come back to a boil WITHOUT stirring. Once it is bubbling hard, stir it through.
💡 This is the one rule of adobo worth memorising. Stirring raw vinegar into the pot leaves a harsh, raw-acid taste that never quite cooks off. Let it boil first and the sharpness burns away, leaving the sourness behind.
Simmer uncovered for another 15 minutes, until the sauce has reduced and turned glossy and dark.
Stir in the sugar, taste, and add salt only if it needs it. Serve with plenty of steamed rice.
💡 Adobo is aggressively seasoned on purpose — it is designed to be eaten in small amounts with a lot of rice. Judge the salt with a mouthful of rice, not on its own.

💡 Mẹo

Adobo genuinely improves overnight. Filipino families cook it a day ahead on purpose — the vinegar and salt keep it safely, and the flavour deepens.
Pork belly cut into cubes works in exactly the same recipe — give it 60 minutes instead of 30 before the vinegar goes in. Half chicken, half pork is a very common household version.
If the sauce is too sharp for you, another teaspoon of sugar fixes it faster than anything else. If it is too salty, add water and reduce again rather than diluting and stopping.