Photo credit: Marvin Gapultos, The Adobo Road Cookbook
In this Chicken Adobo Recipe, you’ll learn:
- Classic Filipino Chicken Adobo recipe from The Adobo Road Cookbook
- Simple 6-ingredient recipe
- Prep time is only 5 minutes
What is Adobo?
In Filipino cooking, “Adobo” is a method of cooking that uses a braising liquid made of soy sauce, garlic, black pepper, bay leaves, salt and vinegar. After this base of ingredients, there are so many different variations. You can “adobo” many types of ingredients, from seafood, meats, vegetables and even fruit – though you’ll most often see chicken and pork.
My favorite of all adobos is Chicken Adobo. Not only is the recipe so simple (6 ingredients!), but using skin-on chicken thighs makes this recipe very forgiving. If you ask Marvin Gapultos, the author of The Adobo Road Cookbook, he’ll tell you pork belly is his favorite.
I’ve known Marvin for about 8 years now. He was one of my very first foodie friends I met online when I first started Steamy Kitchen. Our love of Asian cooking and blogging fueled our friendship. The blog, Burnt Lumpia, gave birth to an award-winning food truck, called The Manila Machine in Los Angeles (it has since shut down.)
“This is the Chicken Adobo I grew up with – everything is thrown into a pot and simmered, the sauce is boiled and reduced, done. It is adobo in its simplest, most basic, and perhaps best form. But don’t confuse basic with bland. As the sauce for this dish finishes and boils, the bubbling helps to emulsify the liquid with the chicken fat in the pan, creating a simple yet flavorful glaze. And even though the chicken isn’t browned or seared, it still achieves a beautiful brown sheen from the luscious sauce.” –Marvin Gapultos
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Chicken Adobo Recipe
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
- 1/2 cup cider vinegar or distilled white
- 6-8 cloves garlic smashed with side of a knife and peeled
- 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns *
- 2 bay leaves
- 6 skin-on bone-in chicken thighs
Instructions
- In a large, nonreactive saute pan, whisk together the soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, black peppercorns and bay leaves. Nestle in the chicken thighs, skin side down, into the pan. Bring the liquid to a boil over high heat, and then cover and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes. Turn the chicken over, and then cover and simmer for another 10 minutes.
- Uncover then pan, and then increase the heat to high and return the sauce to a boil. While occassionally turning and basting the chicken, continue boiling the sauce, uncovered, until it is reduced by half and thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Serve with steamed white rice.
Did you try this recipe? Please leave a star rating in the recipe card below and leave a review in the comment section! I always appreciate your feedback and I know other readers do, too!
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We are currently staying at an Airbnb and looking for easy to make less ingredients recipe and decided we want to make chicken adobo. Found your recipe and it was a hit! My fiancé and the kids loved it! Thanks for sharing!
chicken adobo recipe …..yuuuuummmmmyyyy!!
Yummooo!!! I’m so lucky to have found this website! We love chinese food and it’s so hard to find decent recipes( trust me I’ve tried many). This chicken is so good but I will try with cracked pepper next time as it is much easier to eat the sauce
Masarap ang luto ng pinoy
I am Filipino, and I never made Chicken Adobo. I ate it growing up my grandmother always made it.
I gave it a try and made for the first time. It is delicious. the Chicken Adobo was the same as my grandmothers. It brought back many childhood memories as I was enjoying it.
What do you serve with this as a side dish? Is rice good with it?
Hi Jenny – yes, white rice!
I’m situated in London and I generally crave for the diverse sorts of cooking (bit fiery :)) I discovered your website when I was searching for some chicken recipes. You have an amazing rundown of recipes. I think regardless of the fact that I make one recipe a week, it will keep going for the year. Thanks.
This sounds incredibly easy to make, but in fact it is not always the case. Could you tell me what kind of temperatures you set your oven at, at the different stages of preparation? 🙂 I seem to either boil it out too quickly, or it takes more than half an hour for the whole chicken to be done
When I was younger my mom got a recipe for Chicken Adobo from a Filipino friend of hers. We’d eat it alllll the time. I was just thinking about how I missed it and here’s a recipe! Seriously couldn’t be better timing. Even as a kid I loved how simple it seemed to be. I need this in my life again!
This looks like a delicious recipe. We are big fans of Chicken Adobo and have tried various recipes, but will definitly try out this one!
I’m made this recipe this morning, but then microwaved it, yes microwaved it, this evening. The chicken was so tender, the sauce was incredibly sweet and spicy. I used less soy sauce and vinegar, always use less than recipe calls for, and it came out perfect. Served this over pureed parsnips, pears with sour cream and a broccoli salad with red onions and pancetta. Delicious. This is a keeper. Thank you!
And even though the chicken isn’t browned or seared, it still achieves a beautiful brown sheen from the luscious sauce
I never tire of new chicken recipes ~ we eats tons of chicken like lots of people and area always looking for ways to dress it up =) I’m thrilled about this adobo cooking as both I am my husband have lots of filipino cousins (even though we are both white) and I want to ask them about this method.
I can’t wait to try this recipe for my kids this weekend. They love pretty much anything chicken and I have run out of chicken ideas!! Thank you for sharing it.
LOVE this recipe!! Hard to imagine so few ingredients make such an amazing and tasty dish, but it is true!
I need recipes
I’m so happy you featured Filipino Chicken Adobo on Steamy Kitchen. It’s a beloved recipe and Marvin’s cookbook is a great resource. This is the kind of dish I cook every week and put away in a pyrex, refrigerated for those busy nights when I don’t know what to make for dinner. Thanks for sharing this awesome recipe, Jaden. Thanks, Marvin!
Thanks to a Filipino bf I had many many years ago, I am a biiiiiig fan of adobo…my favorite is pork adobo.
I just did this with pork chops on Monday.
I made chicken adobo a couple of weeks ago and my daughter finally tried it and loved it.
I usually do a pork roast and let it marinade overnight….I then sear it on all sides then cook it in the crock pot.
Hoooooooooooly moley…it is so good that way.
Anywho, thanks Jaden for introducing more people to the wonderful flavors of adobo.
Salamat.
Kathleen,
When you use a pork roast to marinate with the other ingredients listed, do you use a bone-in or bone less center cut pork loin roast in your crock pot? Pork loin roast tends to be lean with very little fat, do you find it tends to become dry after cooking in the crock pot a few hours? Or do you use a fattier cut of pork like a pork shoulder or pork butt when using the crock pot method?
Thank you in advance for your help and input.