Chicken Adobo

Although I posted this recipe (in my other blog) months ago, I am posting it again with photos. Chicken Adobo has got to be one of the most easiest Filipino dishes to make! I decided to make Adobo for Christmas dinner since we had lunch at my mom's. I wanted my food offerings to be different because most of the same folks who went to my mom's would be at our place at night and I didn't want to serve up my mom's leftovers (because she gave us a lot)! Here are the main ingredients (raw chicken not pictured until later):

Chicken Adobo

Ingredients:

1 3-lb chicken, cut into serving pieces (again, I used the wings & drummettes)

1/2 cup soy sauce (I used Kikkoman low sodium)

3/4 cup white vinegar (although you could also use apple cider vinegar for a sweeter taste)

1 medium onion, quartered

1 or 2 HEADS (heads, I say, NOT cloves) of crushed garlic

*optional: several sliced coins of ginger (not a traditional ingredient), skin on

3-4 bay leaves

1/2 tbsp black peppercorns

*optional: several tsp of annatto powder (also known as 'achiote' or 'atsuete') to give a reddish color. My mom does this. I tried it for this shoot but didn't put too much. I think my mom uses a lot!
Directions:

You could either brown the chicken first, or do it the easy way. Here's the easy way:
Dump ALL of the ingredients into a non-reactive pot (the vinegar in this dish will screw up the pot, so use a non stick one). Bring to a boil and simmer for half an hour. I did mine for about 40 minutes. It depends on how soft you want your chicken. Here are the chicken wing pieces. I hacked off the wing tips (to use them for a future stock) and separated the drummettes from the wings.

TIP: Once you put all of your ingredients in the pot, leave it ALONE! Resist the temptation to stir it around and mess with it. Let it simmer. Also, never add water to adobo!

After simmering the chicken, remove the chicken pieces from the pot and place in a separate serving dish.

Let the sauce in the pot boil until it is reduced by half. I am not a fan of 'wet' adobo but I don't like it super dry either.

Close up of the sauce. You could see the bits of garlic and ginger in there.

Here is the chicken without the reduced sauce.

When we were young, I would hate biting into the black peppercorns. As an adult, I still do but now I'm more careful to pick them out.

The sauce is nearly reduced now.

Cover the reserved chicken pieces with the newly reduced sauce.

Nearly every Filipino I know does his or her adobo recipe differently. A friend of mine used red wine in hers. Another friend does this recipe in a crock pot! My own brother uses red onions and he fries potatoes and adds those last in his adobo. I only recently started adding onions in my adobo to give it a sweeter taste, along with the ginger. The addition of potato wedges also gives adobo another twist by soaking up all the saltiness. I personally don't prefer potatoes in my adobo, but I'll eat it! Serve hot with white rice.

*Note: Adobo tastes even better the next day. Unlike the old days in the topics when there was no refrigeration, I do keep my leftover adobo in the fridge. You can scrape off the fat that rises to the top of the sauce the next day if you want to cut down some calories.