Philippine adobo
  Chicken adobo (above) and pork adobo (below) | |
| Course | Main course |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | Philippines |
| Serving temperature | Hot |
| Main ingredients | Meat (beef, chicken, pork), soy sauce, vinegar, cooking oil, garlic, black peppercorn, bay leaf |
Adobo (Filipino: "marinade," "sauce" or "seasoning") is the name of a popular dish and cooking process in Philippine cuisine that involves meat or seafood marinated in a sauce of vinegar and garlic, browned in oil, and simmered in the marinade.
Although it has a name taken from the Spanish, the cooking method is indigenous to the Philippines. When the Spanish conquered the Philippines in the late 16th century and early 17th century, they encountered an indigenous cooking process which involved stewing with vinegar, which they then referred to as adobo, the Spanish word for seasoning or marinade. Dishes prepared in this manner eventually came to be known by this name, with the original term for the dish now lost to history.[1]
While the adobo dish and cooking process in Filipino cuisine and the general description of adobo in Spanish cuisine share similar characteristics, they refer to different things with different cultural roots. While the Philippine adobong can be considered adobo in the Spanish sense—a marinated dish—the Philippine usage is much more specific. Typically, pork or chicken, or a combination of both, is slowly cooked in vinegar, crushed garlic, bay leaf, black peppercorns, and soy sauce, then browned in the oven or pan-fried to get the desirable crisped edges.[2][3] There are also seafood variants which can include shrimp and squid[4].
Adobo has been called the quintessential Philippine stew, served with rice both at daily meals and at feasts.[2] It is commonly packed for Filipino mountaineers and travelers because it keeps well without refrigeration. Its relatively long shelf-life is due to one of its primary ingredients, vinegar, which inhibits the growth of bacteria.
Outside of the home-cooked dish, the essence of adobo has been developed commercially and adapted to other foods. A number of successful local Philippine snack products, such as nuts, chips, noodle soups, and corn crackers, market their items as adobo flavored.
There are several variations of adobong in the Philippines in which soy sauce is used, such as adobong baboy, in which pork is used, and adobong manok, in which chicken is used. There is also the adobong pusit, a squid-based dish in which the broth is a mixture of squid ink and vinegar.
See also
References
- ^ Ocampo, Ambeth. (February 24, 2009). "Looking Back: 'Adobo' in many forms". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
- ^ a b Davidson, Alan and Tom Jaine. (2006). The Oxford Companion to Food. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 5. ISBN 0-19-280681-5.
- ^ Sifton, Sam. (January 5, 2011). The Cheat: The Adobo Experiment. The New York Times. Retrieved January 7, 2011.
- ^ AdoboChef (January 5, 2011). Traditional Adobo Recipes Retrieved June 22, 2012.
