Comfort Food: Adobong Manok
Remember: I'm not a culinary expert. I just hung out in my parents' kitchen a lot.
Comfort Food follows the most practical part of my magic practice—recipes. Here’s what keeps my household healthy.
Every Filipino house has its own version of Adobo. In the house I grew up in, I can think of one constant recipe that we followed—but it changed depending on who was cooking. Sometimes it would be pork and chicken, just pork or chicken, and often, there would be chicken liver in the sauce. But my own Adobo recipe isn’t what I learned from my childhood.
Different Types of Adobo
Each Filipino cook has to figure out what they love about Adobo and what their recipe is going to be like. Did you know that there are many regional versions of Adobo that have very specific ingredients? I talk about this a little in an old article I wrote for the Philippine Online Chronicles:
The modern and widespread addition of soy sauce to the recipe betrays a Chinese influence, while the turmeric present in the adobong dilaw may be evidence of it being an Indian-inspired variant. Adobong pula, like the Mexican version of Spanish adobo, contains achuete.
On top of these versions, there’s Adobong puti—made without soy sauce and usually with a lot of coconut vinegar. Some like their Adobo soupy, while others like a sauce that has a lot of animal fat. Others like their Adobo twice or thrice-cooked and dry.
You can also add coconut milk to your typical adobo to make the sauce richer. Some borrow ideas from the recipe of Humba—a braised pork dish similar to Adobo—and add ingredients like brown sugar, Sprite, or pineapple juice to their Adobo. I’ve seen many versions with ingredients I wouldn’t use in Adobo in the homes of my friends and carenderias: whole boiled eggs, sliced onions, bird’s eye chili peppers.
My Version of Adobo
My recipe evolved as I did in the kitchen. In its first incarnation, I used butter and lemons. What!? I know, I was making it weird for weird’s sake. However, I’ve since relaxed and found that I like making Adobo as close to traditional as possible.
Here’s What You’ll Need
1lb of chicken. I usually use four chicken thighs.
1/2 cup of soy sauce. If you’re using the type that’s “less salt,” I would add more salt later on during the marinating.
1/4 cup of vinegar. White vinegar is traditional, but I find that using different types to reach this amount can add more flavor. Typically, I do 2 tbsp of white vinegar and 2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar.
2 tbsp brown sugar. You can use white sugar if you don’t have brown. If you’re doubling the recipe or adjusting it for more meat, remember that the ratio for soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar should remain the same—4:2:1.
4-6 garlic cloves. This is the minimum amount you can use—I usually throw in more during sauteeing and also add garlic powder to the marinade.
1-4 bay leaves. You’ll remove this when you plate the dish, so try to use whole leaves that you can fish out easily.
Salt and pepper. No set amount, just to taste. If you want it spicier, you may also want to use whole black peppercorns during the simmer.
Here’s How You Cook It
Separate the skin from the meat of the chicken. On a pan with a little bit of oil over low heat, start crisping the skin up. You can serve this along with the Adobo or just have it for a snack as you’re plating.
Season the chicken meat with salt and pepper. Do this in a bowl or a plastic bag. I usually add some garlic powder here, too—it spreads easier than minced garlic. Add all of the soy sauce and just a little bit of the vinegar—enough to help tenderize the meat along with the salt. Put the bowl or bag away until you’re ready to cook.
Mince the garlic and then throw it in a pan to saute. If your chicken skin has crisped nicely, take it out of the pan and rest it on a paper towel. You can then use the same pan for the garlic—otherwise, you can use a different pan that will fit the amount of chicken you marinated. This garlic flavors the sauce and should just be sauteed until you smell it.
Don’t cook the garlic until it’s brown and crunchy—you can do that later on with a different batch of cloves in a different pan if you want to use garlic as a topping. If you typically used a garlic crusher, I would suggest using a knife to properly mince garlic if you want to cook them until golden brown and crunchy.
Turn up the heat and brown your chicken meat. Don’t crowd your pan. If you think you’ll need to do this step in two batches, take out the garlic from the pan after the first batch and add it back in after the browning’s done. Your goal is to brown both sides of each piece of chicken meat in garlic-infused oil.
Put almost everything in the pan for a long simmer. Arrange the chicken meat in the pan so everything’s level and touching the bottom of the pan as much as possible. Add the marinade—and the sautéed garlic, if you took them out. Add bay leaves and the whole black peppercorns.
Once the marinade is boiling, turn down the heat and let it simmer for 20 minutes. Most people add water at this point so the liquid covers all of the meat, and then simmer it with the lid off—but I find that this dilutes the flavor and makes it a lot more difficult to salt and pepper the dish to taste before serving. What I do is that I let the Adobo simmer with a lid on for 10 minutes, then I turn the chicken parts and let it simmer for 10 more.
After 20 minutes, add the remaining vinegar and the sugar. It would be wise to check the chicken’s temperature just before this point, so you can leave it for longer before proceeding. This is when you check if the chicken is cooked and adjust the Adobo sauce to your taste. Stir things around the pan to make sure that the vinegar and sugar are completely incorporated, then taste it. Add salt or pepper to taste. You can also add more vinegar or sugar if you want. (If you want to use coconut milk, this is the point where you add it, too.) I usually let it simmer for 10 minutes more after I adjust the flavor.
Separate the chicken from the sauce. Remove the bay leaves, too. At this point, the Adobo is done. You can serve it after the simmer. But I like to do some finishing touches. I do a slight sear on one side of the chicken pieces—the part that’s facing up when I plate it! And if the sauce feels a little runny, I cook it down further—or add some flour to it if I’m in a hurry.
Serve it with rice. You can have chicken skin and fried garlic as rice toppings, along with your Adobo sauce. If you want a little bit more on your plate, you can serve Adobo with fried eggs.
Let Me Know If You Enjoyed This!
This is a new thing for me—sharing how I cook, I mean. If this is something you’d like me to do more, please tell me. And let me know what else you want to learn how to cook the way I do.
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