Filipino Chicken Adobo Recipe, CiCi Li - Asian Home Cooking Recipes

Chicken adobo is one of the most popular Filipino dishes. It is so beloved by Filipinos that they even call it their national dish. Let's marinate our chicken. Traditionally, Filipinos use coconut vinegar for this recipe, but I really can't find it at any of my local supermarkets. I went to 3 of them and none of them has this. Today, I'm using apple cider vinegar instead. You could also use rice vinegar or just cane vinegar. They will all do the job. Apple cider vinegar soy sauce and sugar Transfer in the chicken pieces and let it marinate for about 30 minutes. You can also marinate this overnight in the fridge. So you might be wondering what exactly is Filipino's adobo. It is a braised dish. You can use protein, meat, or vegetables to do it. And the main seasonings usually include vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, black peppercorns, and also bay leaves. So now we're going to use our all-purpose Chinese knife to just cut out the end or the tip part of the garlic. I really love my Chinese knife because it's like I said, it's all-purpose. You can do so many things with it. Just one knife. You can use it to smash. You can use it to tenderize meat. You can use it to chop, dice, cut julienne. And then you can even use it to pick up ingredients. To cook the chicken, first remove the chicken from the marinade and place it on a plate. And you can use a paper towel to kind of just pat dry the chicken pieces. So by doing so, we will make sure that it will brown nicely in the pan later. Reserve the marinade sauce. And we're going to add about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in here. Place the chicken in the pan and cook over medium-high heat until browned. And it's going to take about four minutes on each side. So have you wondered why do Filipinos cook with so much vinegar? So here's why. Pre-colonial Filipinos often cook their food with vinegar and salt as a way to preserve their food longer in the hot weather. As you know, in the Philippines, it is often very, very hot. So vinegar in particular is one of the most essential ingredients in Filipino cuisine with four main traditional types. You can name them like coconut vinegar, king vinegar, palm vinegar, and gaong palm vinegar. So yeah, all types of vinegar. Okay, so now we can remove the chicken and place it on a plate. So I have a Filipino friend back in college, and she told me that everyone in the Philippines knows how to cook chicken adobo. But the funny thing is that everyone's recipe is slightly different from one to another. So it is really okay that you can change the taste a little bit based on your preferences. Add the garlic, bay leaves, black peppercorns, and cook over medium-low heat until the aroma comes out for about a minute. Pour in the marinade and bring to a simmer. Transfer back the chicken, cover the lid, and use medium-low heat for cooking the chicken until well done for about 45 minutes. When the Spanish empire colonized the Philippines in the late 16th century and early 17th century, they encountered the adobo cooking process. Spanish later evolved this adobo chicken into something different, their own dish. The only similarities between the Filipino adobo chicken and the Spanish adobo chicken is the use of vinegar and garlic, but Spanish also use their own spices, such as chilies, paprika, oregano, and sometimes even tomatoes. While our chicken adobo is cooking at the back there, I'm just going to make some rice for the family so that later when we have dinner to eat, it pairs so well with rice. You know, this is how I feel. I feel like the chicken adobo is just kind of like Chinese chicken braised in soy sauce. It's very similar, except we almost don't use vinegar at all. Even if we want to use vinegar, it would just be a teaspoon of it to remove the gamey taste of the chicken, but we do use a lot of wine, like rice wine or Shaoxing wine for braised chicken. Okay, so our chicken adobo is ready. It's actually really fast. It's a few steps, and then you get this beautiful braised chicken adobo at home. Awesome! So let me give it a try. Look at how juicy it is. Oh gosh. Yummy, yummy. Oh my god. It is so amazing. So good. My chicken adobo recipe is super awesome today. The chicken is juicy and tender and really hearty, but because there's vinegar to it, it makes it refreshing at the same time. It's going to go so well with rice, but my rice is not ready yet. I'm going to have it for dinner. Okay, so comment below and let me know if you have any questions at all. And thumbs up, subscribe, share this awesome video with your friends and family. Let's also stay in touch on Facebook. Just search for Cicely and you'll find me. Alright, so I'll see you in the next episode. Bye now. Okay, yum, yum.