Chicken Adobo

I love this dish. It’s one of those “put it all on the pot and let it cook until you’re ready to eat” kind of dishes. We like it served over brown rice and with some avocado on the side. Of course, I like avocado on the side of everything. We first learned about this dish from Nathan’s aunt Cindy. We stopped by there house on our way out west and she fed us this delicious dish that was simmering on the stove. We asked and she said it was very simple and is a traditional Filipino dish. We found a recipe on Big Oven and made a few alterations until it was just like we liked it. This recipe is for 2 people, but it’s easy to add more chicken, just chop it up smaller so it all fits.
Ingredients:

2 whole chicken legs with thighs
You can also do a bunch of legs with no thighs or get a whole chicken and chop it up, but the dark meat is the best part for this dish. Do not try it with boneless chicken. It needs the bones. Also, leave the skin on. It helps keep everything moist.

1 1/2 C Apple Cider Vinegar
I use the unfiltered stuff I get in bulk at the food co-op. Some recipes call for just any old vinegar. They are wrong. Apple Cider is the only way to go.

1/2 C Soy sauce
I also use the good stuff from the bulk department. You can use the packaged stuff, but I can taste a difference. Some recipes call for adding salt as well. Since soy sauce is basically liquid salt in my book, I think adding salt is plain silly.

6T Garlic; finely minced
I usually use a whole bulb and send it through the garlic press, but don’t tell Nathan b/c I think he thinks I put too much garlic in most things. He’s never complained about the chicken adobo not being awesome, though, so let’s not ruin the illusion. Honestly, he only complains when he SEES how much garlic I put in, otherwise we’re good to go.

1t Pepper; freshly ground
We have all of our pepper already mixed black/green/white/red, but if you aren’t all multi-colored it’s okay to be all black. Also some recipes call for 1T of peppercorns. This is a bad idea. I guess you could try to strain out the peppercorns, but that’s a real pain. Nathan & I have nixed the whole -or even cracked- peppercorns due to our mutual dislike of the almost chewy but still crunch nature of those little buggers.

2 Bay Leaves

1 12-oz can Coconut Milk
I really like this part, but it’s optional. If you leave out the coconut milk, your adobo sauce will be much thinner, but still delicious. I just love the richness that the coconut milk gives it.

Some recipes say you can add 1T of brown sugar, but I find that to be completely unnecessary.

Take all of your ingredients and mix them together in a big pot. We use a red Dutch Oven that my dad got us one year for Christmas. It’s the perfect size. You’ll want to start with all of the non-chicken stuff and really mix it up well, like with a whisk, to get the lumps out of the coconut milk before you put the chicken bits in. I mix everything in the pot we’re going to use to cook because why dirty another dish. The real trick is getting the chicken legs to fit properly because sometimes they’re bigger since we get the local free roaming chickens that aren’t all freakishly identical in size.

Now several recipes say to marinate for a few hours at this point. I never manage to plan that far ahead (except for this one time and I found the marinating didn’t really do anything to make it better), so I just go ahead and put it on the stove. You can also do it in the oven if you feel the need. Just bring the whole thing to a boil and let it go for a while until the meat has started to pull away from the bone (you can do it for less time than that if you must, but this is my recipe so I’m going to tell you how I do it). I usually do this part with the lid on, but sometimes I do it with the lid off. It all depends on my mood.

A quick note: make sure you have thawed your chicken if it’s frozen as this process will leave you cold and uncooked on the inside otherwise.

Another note: While you’re boiling the chicken, you should cook your rice so it’s ready to go when you are.

Once your chicken is cooked, pull it out of the sauce and put it into the oven on a LOW broil for about 5 minutes on each side. Don’t leave it alone because you don’t want to burn it. Reduce the sauce  (they say to half but that takes so darn long, I just reduce until the chicken is done broiling). Then serve it up (rice on the bottom, then chicken, then sauce) and enjoy.

It should look like this:

Be impressed at my self-restraint. I actually took this photo before diving in. I used my phone because I knew if I had to go get the camera I would give up and just eat it. You can’t stand around smelling this stuff and take pictures. You must eat it immediately. Your brain won’t let you resist.