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Above: Philippines national dish Adobo

Adobo is said to be the first dish you will ever learn to cook if you’re a Filipino.

That’s widely debatable; as a lot of places in the Philippines take pride on their own recipes of a wide selection of dishes – mostly passed on thru numerous generations and taught as early as childhood.

But most Filipinos will agree that they know how to make adobo.

As for me, it is the first dish I learned to cook.

Adobo is so easy and yet so flavorful and delicious that people from all over the Philippines have their very own version of the popular viand.

Adobo is actually a Spanish word which means marinade. Adobo is used to describe the actual marinade or seasoning mix we use to inject flavor into our preferred cooking meat. Hence we call our adobo with the meat of choice: chicken = adobong manok, pork = adobong baboy.

Adobo can be done on any kind of meat. Most Filipinos use either pork or chicken; and some even use a combination of both. But you can also make adobo using beef, lamb, turkey, and even fish (tuna or salmon are the easiest to adobo).

Actually you can adobo just about any kind of meat you want (you can even use plain pork liver) and you can still say that what you cooked is authentic adobo.

As I said earlier, it’s just a way of cooking meat.

The marinade is a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, crushed garlic, black pepper, and bay leaf. There isn’t a fixed ratio on how many of each you need to use – it’s just a matter of which flavor you want to dominate the palette. I personally prefer using more vinegar than soy sauce – and I add sugar to my version of the adobo.

The recipe is so simple you can even drop the recipe thing altogether. Basic: all you have to do is prepare the marinade and slowly cook the meat on it over low heat. No need to let the flavor settle before cooking. When that’s done, then it’s done!

You’ll know when it’s cooked when the meat turns brown from absorbing the marinade – or you can just stick a fork in there and see what’s up. But you don’t have to be afraid that your meat turns out undercooked because the vinegar will kill any kind of bacteria in your meat and prevent it from growing – this is also one of the reasons why adobo is considered the “national dish” of the Philippines; we absolutely love adobo because it has a long shelf life. You can cook adobo today in the morning and you still eat it for dinner three days after!

I like my adobo dry.

Most variants foreigners get to try are like stew; in that it has a lot more sauce than it really should. Me, I fry my adobo after cooking – as my meat slowly cooks in a pot on one burner, I am already heating up a pan on another, with oil and a little bit of crushed garlic. As soon as my meat is ready, I drain it and fry it on medium heat. I put some sugar on my remaining marinade and set it aside. I try not to overfry my meat because I still want that tenderness, but I do fry it until the outside is a bit crunchy. When my meat is fried to perfection, I pour the sugared marinade over the meat on the frying pan (with all the oily goodness!). Then I add the bay leaf, which I don’t normally include in the marinade (it’s more tasty if put after cooking). A little sauté and it’s double done.

Serve with hot white rice.

You can also add a number of different ingredients to your basic adobo recipe to make “adobo variants.”

One of my favorites includes putting pineapple chunks and pineapple juice – which makes my adobo a lot sweeter than normal and adds a little citrus flavor to it! Plus it’s healthier!

Others prefer using cocomilk – which is also a widely used ingredient in most Filipino recipes. The creamy goodness of cocomilk (made extra special with a little more chili) blends well with the savory adobo flavor.

Some add a dash of spice to make the adobo flavor more international: to make Chinese style adobo all you need is some star anise, black beans, and a couple of boiled eggs; to make a Mexican/ Spanish variation you just need to add some annatto or roucou (depending on where you are from) – the taste of Mexican food is easily duplicated with a simple spice like this. To make it more American, add potatoes and corn – I promise you it’ll still work!

By the way, you can also make adobo veggies like string beans, water spinach, or eggplant. It’s all the same! Just remember that veggies cook faster and are best served more raw than cooked.

Regardless of which way you want to do it, adobo is best when cooked with passion. You can follow these simple steps to make adobo and end up with good adobo; but I would suggest that you come up with something of your own – make it the best adobo ever and then you too can be an adobo expert like all of us!