Chicken Adobo

When I first started blogging 3 years ago, I had a different site. Here is a post from that site. I no longer use that site, but wanted this here....Enjoy.
















Today at work my co-worker/friend Johnny and I were talking about a delicious Filipino dish called Chicken Adobo. For those of you not familiar with this dish it is a preparation style used to marinate and cook Chicken, Beef, Pork, Seafood, really any type of meat you choose.

The sauce or marinade if you will is basically a garlic-soy-vinegar style marinade. I Googled the word “Chicken Adobo” and found several sites that had recipes. The one I chose was http://www.virtualcities.com/ons/hi/gov/higov80.htm The reason I chose those site mainly was because the Governor of Hawaii, The Honorable Benjamin J. Cayetano endorses this recipe. Additionally, the other recipes I saw seemed to call for only a tablespoon or two of Soy Sauce and from talking to my buddy Johnny and from my readings online Adobo sauce is a Vinegar/Soy combination, and this recipe seemed to do ½ and ½ of each.

For those of you that don’t want to click on the link, the recipe follows (with some modifications that I obtained from Johnny): I will indicate the modifications I made afterwards.

3 pounds chicken thighs, cut into serving pieces
½ cup white vinegar
½ cup soy sauce
¼ teaspoon peppercorns, crushed
1 teaspoon brown sugar
5 garlic cloves, crushed
3 bay leaves
Salt to taste
Combine all ingredients in a pan, cover, and allow to marinate one to three hours. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Uncover the pan and allow to simmer for an additional 15 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated and the chicken is lightly brown. Serve with white rice.
Serves: 4 to 6

I made the following modifications to the recipe:

First, I didn’t marinate for one to three hours. Although this is highly suggested, I didn’t have the time when I got home tonight and the dish seemed to turn out just fine. Next time I may try this step.

Johnny suggested onion is delicious in Adobo, so I added 1 brown onion; ¼ of the onion was diced for a frying step I will describe later and the other ¾ was sliced into thin pieces to add to the cooking chicken. Basically cut the ¾ onion in half and make half moon slices.

I purchased Leg/Thigh quarters and separated the legs from the thighs. I ended up with 8 pieces (4 legs, 4 thighs) From my experience of eating Adobo in the past, I enjoyed the drum legs, so I thought why not use them also. As for cutting the pieces into serving pieces I omitted this step. The first thigh I tried cutting in half with my cleaver resulted in the chicken bone shattering and I spent the next several minutes picking shattered chicken bone from the thigh. I realized that hey, there is a reason you don’t give chicken bones to dogs, so if it’s not good enough for my dog, it’s not good enough for me to try. I left the rest of the pieces intact.

I used 1 cup each of white vinegar and soy sauce. Knowing the recipe needs enough moisture to not only cook the chicken but boil down afterwards for a sauce, I decided that 1 cup total liquid wasn’t going to cut it, so I doubled the liquid. This actually worked out nicely and left me plenty of sauce to enjoy.

I added a step of frying the chicken first before adding the marinade. This gave the chicken brownness to it. Many of the recipes I found online said to brown the chicken after cooking in the liquid, but I thought this would not only be messy but might dry out the chicken, so I chose to do the step first. In a deep sauté pan add 2 tablespoons Olive Oil, 3 cloves crushed garlic and the ¼ chopped onion. Sauté the chicken on both sites approx 3 minutes per side to brown. You can then set aside on a plate, empty out oil and chicken fat juices from the pan, return chicken and add marinade/sauce and remaining ¾ sliced onion strips.

So, how did this dish come out? DELICIOUS!!!!! My entire family enjoyed this dish, even my 3 year old daughter. I enjoyed this recipe because I was able to cook it all in one pan and it was easy to prepare.

Until Next Time.....Cook On!!!

The Food Dude