Adobo

adobo a culinary term of the Philippines which usually refers to pork, or chicken and pork, stewed with vinegar, bay leaf, peppercorns, garlic, and soy sauce until brown and aromatic. It may be served with its sauce, or fried crisp. The sauce may also be thickened with mashed chicken liver.

The word comes from the Spanish adobo, referring to a pickling sauce of olive oil, vinegar, and spices (or to the Mexican paste of ground chillies, spices, herbs, and vinegar); and from adobado, pork pickled with the above or with wine and onions. The French daube comes from the same root, addobbo, ‘seasoning’.

Adobo has long been called the quintessential Philippine stew, served with rice both at daily meals and for feasts, and also taken on journeys, since the stewing in vinegar ensures that it keeps well without refrigeration. It is palatable hot or cold. Although chicken and/or pork are the basic adobos, there are many others, for example with squid, various shellfish, catfish, and kangkong (water spinach, swamp cabbage). More exotic examples are agachonas adobadas (with snipe), adobong bayawak (with monitor lizard), and adobong kamaru, in which the mole cricket is featured. The Philippine adobo is thus vinegar-stewed food of almost any kind, not a dish of Spanish or Mexican derivation but a native dish which was given a Spanish name by the Spaniards who came and saw something similar to their own adobado. Raymond Sokolov (1991) is correct to emphasize that ‘Filipino adobo stands by itself, fully formed and always distinct from the “adobo” dishes of Mexico and Spain’, although there are scholars who cite the vinegar- (not wine-) based stews of the Valencian solomillo de cerdo in adobo and the Peruvian adodo de cerdo as possible precursors of the Filipino model.