Coconut Milk Chicken Adobo

Name: Coconut Milk Chicken Adobo (Ah• DOH • boh)
Yield: Serves 6 to 8
Cuisine: Filipino
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon coarsely cracked black pepper; ½ cup (120 ml) coconut vinegar (store-bought or homemade) or rice vinegar; 2 tablespoons coconut oil, store-bought or homemade; ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes; Steamed rice, for serving; 4 pounds (1.8 kg) chicken drumsticks and thighs, bone in and skin on; 15 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled; 1 whole fresh serrano chile; 2 teaspoons whole black peppercorns; 1 cup (240 ml) unsweetened, full-fat coconut milk; 8 bay leaves, fresh or dried; ½ cup (120 ml) soy sauce

Ah• DOH • boh

Preparation info

Serves
6 to 8

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Filipinx

By Angela Dimayuga and Ligaya Mishan

Published 2021

About

Adobo is probably the Filipino dish best known and least understood by Westerners. Like the name of the Philippines itself—imposed by Spanish colonialists in the sixteenth century in honor of their king, Philip II—it bears the lexical imprint of a foreign empire. In 1613, a Franciscan friar, attempting to compile a Tagalog dictionary, reached for the Spanish verb adobar to describe the dousing of ingredients with vinegar, to season and pickle. But that technique of preservation, essential i