Filipino-Style Chicken Adobo
Reprinted from The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio's Award-Winning Food Show by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift (Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2008). Copyright 2008 by American Public Media.
10 minutes prep time; 24 hours marinating; 35 minutes stove time.
Serves 4 to 6.
Adobo is outstanding the day after cooking.
I loved this dish the first time I tasted it years ago. With its simmer sauce of vinegar, garlic and soy sauce, adobo is the hallmark dish of the Philippines. It came back into my life while we were taping a show in Honolulu. The Maunakea Marketplace in Honolulu's Chinatown has a food court of Filipino cooks cooking for Filipino diners. There I had my first adobo in decades and was hooked all over again.
The marinade does all the heavy lifting here. You marinate the chicken overnight, turn everything into a pot and simmer it. One of the cooking techniques that sets Filipino adobo apart is that you brown the meat after it is cooked, not before. That aroma of a browning, marinade-saturated chicken can drive you crazy.
Cook to Cook: Find palm vinegar from the Philippines in some Asian markets. It is made throughout the Pacific from the sap of palm trees and tastes particularly tart and brisk. Cider or white vinegar are good substitutes.
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 10 large garlic cloves, coarse chopped
- 1 tablespoon fresh-ground black pepper
- 1-1/4 cups Filipino palm vinegar, or cider or white vinegar
- 1 cup whole canned tomatoes with their liquid
- 2 bay leaves, broken
- 3 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 8; organic if possible)
- Good tasting extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 medium onions, thin sliced
- 2 whole scallions, thin sliced (optional garnish)
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Instructions
1. The day before cooking the chicken, take a large glass or stainless steel bowl and combine in it the soy sauce, garlic, black pepper, vinegar, tomatoes (break them up with your hands as you add them to the bowl), and the bay leaves. Add the chicken, making sure it is almost completely submerged in the marinade. Lightly cover and refrigerate for 18 to 24 hours.
2. When ready to cook the chicken, turn the mixture into a heavy 4-quart pot. Bring it to a gentle bubble, cover and cook 25 minutes, or until the center of a chicken thigh registers 175 degrees F on an instant reading thermometer.
3. With tongs, remove the chicken to a plate. Skim as much fat as possible from the cooking liquid, increase the heat, and start briskly boiling it down by half. While the liquid reduces, film a straight-sided 12-inch sauté pan with the olive oil. Heat it over medium high. Arrange the chicken pieces skin down to brown, standing back because they may spatter. Adjust heat so chicken doesn't burn.
4. When the chicken pieces are a deep rich brown on one side, turn the pieces and scatter the onion around them. Continue browning the chicken, and move the onions around so the pieces don't burn. Then, with a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken and onions to a serving bowl. Pour the boiled-down pan juices over them and serve. You could garnish the adobo with a scattering of thin-sliced scallions.
About The Show
In 1994, acclaimed food writer and cooking teacher Lynne Rossetto Kasper was receiving accolades for her debut book, The Splendid Table, which at that time was the only book to have won both the James Beard and Julia Child Cookbook of the Year awards. Among the many people enchanted by the book was producer and foodie Sally Swift, who thought the time could be right for a radio program on food.
