The Endless Varieties of Adobo

The Original Adobo

The Endless Varieties of Adobo is a consolidated list with links to recipes of all possible types of adobo across the Philippines.

What is this Philippine Adobo? Have you even tried it? If not then let me educate you on all The Endless Varieties of Adobo but before we just do that let’s start with the most basic adobo, what is its main ingredients, what does it taste, where did it all started?

Well Adobo for starters is the Philippines national dish and it is usually made with pork or chicken stewed in soy sauce and vinegar alongside a hefty amount of garlic, black peppercorns and bay leaves. Flavours can differ based on personal choice where it can be somewhere between sweet, sour, salty and sometimes spicy hot.

Back home you can see this everywhere from restaurants, at home and even in “baons” at work or at school, you can even smell this once in a while while walking back home, the scent of that frying garlic and the scent of the simmering soy sauce and vinegar is one of the most sought after aroma of most Filipinos.

The name of the dish was derived from a Spanish word adobar which means “marinade” or “picking sauce” but this does not mean it has its Spanish roots. Dating back in 1613 where this dish was first documented in a dictionary by a person named Pedro de San Buenaventura, in this dictionary he named it as “adobo de los naturales” because of the similarity to Spanish and Mexican dishes with the same name. The Spanish roots ends in the name as the dish already existed ever since the Spanish invasion. According to the Raymond Sokolov a food historian the ingredients for this dish already existed in the Philippines even before Ferdinand Magellan set foot on our shores it was just not recorded. It was also believed that the original recipe uses vinegar only and salt since soy sauce was not yet existing during those times.

Today we have many versions of this dish but the most popular ones are the Pork and Chicken but since this sauce is quite versatile different viands were created using the same sauce or even the same methods and here are some of it.  So without further ado let me present to you below The Endless Varieties of Adobo.

Let’s start this list with the real adobo dishes

Pork Adobo, where mainly pork belly is used

Chicken Adobo, like the name suggest it uses chicken, sometimes with gizzards and liver

And if you can’t decide between the two then combine them together so you have a Chicken Pork Adobo

Not a fan of meat? Why not try some Adobong Kangkong, where water spinach is flavoured with the awesome sauce

or better yet try some Adobong Sitaw, this time its snake beans who is the star of the dish

For the seafood lovers why not try Adobong Pusit, squid with its ink cooked the adobo way

You want to add a different layer of flavour then try Adobong Manok sa Gata where meat is cooked with coconut milk alongside the usual adobo ingredients

If coconut is your thing then try turmeric in this Adobong Dilaw

Or if you just want it to be as plain as possible like how they used to do it in the old days the just use vinegar only like this Adobo sa Puti

Don’t want to eat it with rice then make it crispy like this Crispy Adobo so you can enjoy it with your favourite drink

And yes you can enjoy it also in chicken wing form like this Adobo Sauce Glazed Chicken Wings

and finally the most popular pulutan of all, the Adobong Mani

I know this list is not complete so if you have other adobo ideas that you can share let us know by commenting below.