Filipino Chicken Adobo is the national dish of the Philippines and may well become your new favourite Asian chicken dish! Just a few everyday ingredients I can practically guarantee you already have, it’s an effortless recipe that yields juicy, tender chicken coated in a sweet savoury glaze with little pops of heat from peppercorns.
This is a chicken thigh recipe and it MUST be made with thighs – no substituting with chicken breast!
Filipino Chicken Adobo
Filipino Chicken Adobo is one of the first chicken thigh recipes I shared way back in 2015 when I started this website. Back then, I boldly stated that this was my new favourite Asian chicken recipe even it was thoroughly disloyal of me to say that, being of Japanese background and all (Teriyaki, Karaage and Yakitori….to name a few….).
To be honest, I may have embellished a wee bit. Blinded by the excitement of discovering Chicken Adobo, how unbelievably easy it is for a dish that yields such incredible flavour,
Check out how sticky the sauce is! It truly tastes as incredible as it looks. And it’s SO EASY with just a HANDFUL of ingredients!
What you need
Filipino Chicken Adobo is the national dish of the Philippines and like all traditional dishes, there are many variations – including using different proteins like pork and beef.
Fundamentally though, the key is the right balance of soy sauce, vinegar, black peppercorns and sugar that creates an incredibly sticky glaze with a depth of flavour like it’s been slow cooked – but it’s not!
boneless skinless chicken thighs – cannot substitute with breast, need the fat to transform sauce into a glaze;
soy sauce – all purpose or light soy sauce. NOT dark soy sauce (bottle will be labelled as such if it’s dark soy sauce);
white vinegar – just everyday, plain white vinegar. Sub with any clear vinegar, including rice wine, apple cider, sherry vinegar. Vinegars can vary in their acidity, so if using substitutes start with less (see recipe notes);
onion and garlic;
peppercorns – or coarse cracked pepper;
sugar – brown best, white ok;
bay leaves – fresh or dried, not the end of the world if you don’t have; and
green onion – optional garnish
How to make Filipino Chicken Adobo
And here’s how to make it. Basically, you marinate the chicken briefly, sear the chicken, then simmer it in the pan with the marinade for 25 minutes. It will look watery right up until the last few minutes, then all of a sudden, the liquid transforms magically into a syrupy glaze!
What Chicken Adobo tastes like
The glaze of Filipino Chicken Adobo is savoury and sweet with a hint of tang, with a distinct soy flavour. The garlic and onion creates a savoury base along with the bay leaves, and the peppercorns add little subtle pops of heat.
Don’t be afraid of the peppercorns in this! The spiciness is tempered from both the cooking time and the strength of the flavour of the sauce so it becomes a flavour enhancer rather than fiery spiciness.
And finally, the chicken itself. It’s incredibly tender, owing to the cook time. Chicken thighs only take about 6 to 8 minutes to cook on the stove, so simmering them in sauce for 25 minutes yields thighs that are so tender inside, it’s like you’ve slow cooked them for hours.
What to serve with Chicken Adobo
Rice to soak up the sauce is essential! Though if you’re counting calories, I can highly recommend Cauliflower Rice – pictured in the first photo in the post alongside Smashed Cucumbers for a seriously delicious dinner plate clocking in at a grand total of just 415 calories.
You may not use all the sauce this Filipino Chicken Adobo recipe makes. It is quite strong, so have a taste before dousing your entire plate with it.
As you can see in the photos, I do not hold back. 😂 – Nagi x
PS If you do have leftover sauce, don’t throw it out! That stuff is GOLD. I use it to make Filipino Chicken Adobo fried rice – just fry up cooked rice with chopped up pieces of this chicken, some chopped Asian greens and the sauce. The sauce is so flavoursome that you don’t need anything else!
Watch how to make it
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Filipino Chicken Adobo (Flavour Kapow!)
Ingredients
Chicken and Marinade
- 750g / 1.5 lb chicken thigh fillets , boneless and skinless (5 – 6 pieces) (Note 1)
- 3 garlic cloves , minced
- 1/3 cup (85ml) soy sauce , ordinary all purpose or light (not dark soy sauce, Note 2)
- 1/3 cup + 2 tbsp white vinegar , see Note 3
- 4 bay leaves (fresh) or 3 dried
For cooking
- 2 tbsp oil , separated (vegetable, canola or peanut)
- 3 garlic cloves , minced
- 1 small brown onion , diced
- 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) water
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tbsp whole black pepper (sub 2 tsp coarse cracked pepper)
Serving:
- 2 green onions/scallions , sliced (garnish)
Instructions
- Combine Chicken and Marinade ingredients in a bowl. Marinate for at least 20 minutes, or up to overnight.
- Heat 1 tbsp oil in a skillet over high heat. Remove chicken from marinade (reserve marinade) and place in the pan. Sear both sides until browned – about 1 minute on each side. Do not cook the chicken all the way through.
- Remove chicken skillet and set aside.
- Heat the remaining oil in skillet. Add garlic and onion, cook 1 1/2 minutes.
- Add the reserved marinade, water, sugar and black pepper. Bring it to a simmer then turn heat down to medium high. Simmer 5 minutes.
- Add chicken smooth side down. Simmer uncovered for 20 to 25 minutes (no need to stir), turning chicken at around 15 minutes, until the sauce reduces down to a thick jam-like syrup.
- If the sauce isn't thick enough, remove chicken onto a plate and let the sauce simmer by itself – it will thicken much quicker – then return chicken to the skillet to coat in the glaze.
- Coat chicken in glaze then serve over rice. Pictured in post as a healthy dinner plate (415 calories) with cauliflower rice and Ginger Smashed Cucumbers.
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Originally published February 2015. Updated January 2019 with brand new photos, step photos, video and most importantly, Life of Dozer section added!!
Life of Dozer
Dozer started 2019 the same way as he finished it – in the POOL!!
I enjoyed your recipes. Tge chicken Adobe is very close to my Nana’s. I was wondering if you have a recipe for Beco I might have spelled it wrong. But it’s made with sweet rice, brown suger?, anise seeds and maybe coconut milk?. If you have a recipe for this sweet sticky dessert can you post it or send it to me. It was one of my favorite sweets my Nana made for me growing up.
Huge hit in my house. One modification I made is a lot less additional water (I used about half a cup). It takes way too long to reduce and it is too watery. Other than that I followed the recipe and it is delicious.
Foodiie!
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to know how and what
Taking the comments to heart, I added less water than the recipe called for, knowing I could always add a bit of hot water as needed. Total cooking time was too much. It’s hard to make thighs dry but 25 minutes in a simmering sauce can do it. Flavor was outstanding though.
You should also try Kare Kare!!!a popular Filipino staple https://remyeats.com/article/dining/kare-kare-a-filipino-culinary-treasure/
Since it was taking rather long for the sauce to reduce, I threw in a bit of flour (barley) and it works just great. If anyone finds it taking longer than they want, I would suggest to toss in a bit of edible flour or starch. The ones I have on hand, aside from plain flour are the following: rye, oat, cornmeal, quinoa, cassava, amaranth, coconut, chickpea. As for the starches: potato, tapioca and arrowroot. Cornstarch is quite common in Asian cooking but I prefer not to use it.
This worked out nicely. Used bone-in/skin-on thigh cutlets and made sure to brown the skin till to was golden (this took more like 2 minutes rather than the 1 specified) I used rice vinegar, a tbs of dark soy for colour after reading other comments and only half the amount of garlic (we have garlic phobes in the house). Reduced the sauce for ten minutes so it didnt become sticky or thick but we loved having lots of cooking juices to serve with the rice. We all enjoyed it, thank you!
So I’m not a cook and very seldom do it. But my wife is Filipino and just came home from the Philippines and I wanted to do something special for her. I thank God for your recipe because it was really easy to follow and I think I did a really good job. She’s been traveling for the last 40+ hours so she’s asleep but as soon as she gets up, I’m sure she would love it! The only thing I changed was she likes bone in chicken so I got chicken thighs with bones and she likes red onions instead of brown. Other than that, everything was a by the book! I look forward to trying some more of your recipes! Thanks again for your help! Yours, Wayne.
Another hit! Followed the recipe exactly and this was absolutely delicious! Chicken was beautifully tender and flavoursome. Thanks Nagi.
This one wasn’t a big hit for us. I felt the chicken was kind of overcooked, maybe it would be better to simmer on low… or just take it out earlier? The flavor was okay, but not a recipe I would repeat. Is it because I used rice vinegar? I live in Japan so I made everything with Japanese ingredients…. The color of the sauce was much lighter than the picture as well, even tho the brown sugar I have is pretty dark and it definitely reached the jammy stage. The sauce did take longer to reduce as others suggested but it all happened quickly after I took the chicken out so not an issue at all.
Can you get apple cider vinegar? We’ve cooked it in Japan with great success. Not this particular recipe, the standard adobo we always do. (Filipino in-laws)
I make this recipe all the time, so insanely easy if and cheap and so yummy. if you can follow directions you should have no problem. usually my bf and i finish it sauce and all. couldn’t recommend enough.
I don’t like dark meat, so I had to use chicken tenders, cubed. I seared them brown on super high heat before simmering. I took a few liberties as I like extremely seasoned food- 13 bay leaves (ripped to increase flavor infusion), an entire head of garlic, and six Thai chilies. Marinated overnight. It was delicious. I’ll be serving it topped off with green onions and dry Korean chili flakes.
Looking at other recipes, this one does have more liquid with the addition of the water. I pulled the chicken and did a cornstarch slurry to thicken the sauce.
Have patience when reducing the sauce. Another quick option is to add 1/2 cup of coconut milk and make a slurry with cornstarch and water to thicken it up, fd
Loved this! Easy and flavorful. One thing I will do differently next time is to simmer the peppercorns in a little bag, to make them easy to remove at the end. Biting down on a whole peppercorn isn’t the end of the world, but it’s…different. Not a criticism, just something I’ll do to make it easier on myself next time.
For those saying this is soupy, just keep it at a good simmer, and it’ll reduce. Just give it time. I probably went closer to 35 minutes, but just stay with it. It’ll get there in the end.
Absolutely seriously delicious and seems to scale up well, BUT agree with all the other comments about the source taking much much longer to reduce. I had assumed this was just because I was making lots more, but it seriously takes ages at least on my stove which is a pretty fancy one. I’m not sure what affect on the flavours just adding less water might have but I think that’s what I’ll try next time.
Yep. I was cooking three thighs and a leg and went with a cup of added water…probably could’ve done 3/4 cup. Also, I did everything in a three-quart pot instead of skillets…browning, sauté, simmering. The deeper pot reduces splatter and cleanup. And I added minced jalapeno to the onion step.
Hi Nagi, I enjoyed making the chicken Adobo, it turned out wonderful. My whole family loved it and went back for more. I did have a problem with using the sauce, I have always heard that you shouldn’t re-use sauce that has raw meat marinating in it.
For cross contamination issues, so I did not do that.
I made fresh sauce, as my serve safe class has instructed. The meal was a hit and I will definitely make it again. We all love the pictures of Dozer!
Followed the steps religiously but got only a watery mess that went in the bin.
that’s so sad to hear…about to make it and will post the outcome
Could you not have thickenrd it with done cornflour and water seems such a waste to throw out. I can add things to make a bad recipe good not saying this is bad in cooking but for dinner tonight
Hi, can you mention whether it’s a 15ml tbsp or 20ml tbsp, please?