As a Filipino mom, Adobo is one of the things that top my list when preparing food for kids recovering from the colds or flu. The strong flavors that are the hallmarks of this dish are suited perfectly to taste buds dulled by medication. Plus the vinegar and loads of garlic that I put in have their own medicinal properties that hasten my kids’ journey back to health.

Adobo is often called the Filipino national dish. I won’t argue that because it probably should be, being as it is *the* one dish people would probably recommend you try if you could eat only one. A whole book can be, and has been, written about adobo, and it arouses such a passion in every Filipino with whom you discuss it. I won’t write the recipe because there’s already a ton of it online that you can try, as you can see from the list following this. All I can tell you is that whenever you make adobo you should make it *your own*.

On this particular night I made ours with chicken thighs and drumsticks, all de-skinned except for one (just to provide a bit of fat to carry the flavors through). The thing with adobo is that it is really adaptable to your tastes or whatever you have in the kitchen. My ultimate adobo would be one made with pork, chicken, and beef. No coconut milk, though I love my dad’s coconut milk adobo (adobo sa gata) which he has been making since I was a child. I prefer my adobo marinated so that the soy sauce and the vinegar seep in through the fibers of the meat, but skipping that step won’t hurt your results too much. What I *do* like is to take some of the fatty pieces of pork, or the chicken if it has not been de-skinned, and dry-fry that in a cast-iron griddle. What that does is caramelize the surface at the same time that it renders the fat, so you get this delicious combination of crisp and concentrated sour-salty-garlicky taste when you bite into it.

Though it is definitely not traditional, I also sometimes add greens to the cooking liquid after the adobo has been cooked, as you can see in the picture. It saves me time not to have to prepare another dish, it takes advantage of the rich flavors already there from cooking the adobo, and I’ve added more nutrition onto my kids’ plates.

And here you go, a sampling of adobo recipes around the ‘net:

Iska’s recipe for Chicken and Pork Adobo
Mike’s recipe, from his friend Alfredo
Arroz a la Adobo
Celia’s Blonde Adobo
Chicken Adobo from Binary Soup
Ed Tep’s Adobo-Style Pork Chops
The Computer Curmudgeon’s Chicken Adobo
Cendrillon’s Romy Dorotan’s Adobo, courtesy of Martha Stewart
Random Soul’s Chicken Adobo
Several Adobo Recipes from FilipinoFoods.Info

as well as some Random Thoughts on Adobo, from The Wily Filipino.

Post from: Blisstree

Filipino Adobo