Billie's Kitchen

A handful of everyday ingredients came together to create one of the most comforting yet flavourful meals I’ve ever cooked.

The Philippines has one of the most fascinating culinary histories I’ve come across, shaped by centuries of trade and cultural exchange. While researching different dishes, I kept coming back to Chicken Adobo. Every family seems to have their own version, which immediately made me curious. A recipe that belongs to everyone – but no two the same – felt like the perfect place to begin.

What has shaped Filipino cuisine?

Filipino cuisine is one of the world’s most diverse, shaped by centuries of trade, migration, and colonial rule. Before European contact, Indigenous communities cooked with rice, seafood, coconut, and native fruits. Chinese traders brought new ingredients, cooking techniques and foods, including noodles and soy-based seasonings

More than 300 years of Spanish rule introduced and popularised new ingredients, cooking techniques, and festive traditions. The result is a cuisine known for its interplay of sweet, sour, salty and savoury flavours, with food culture associated with communal eating among family and friends—a reflection of the Philippines’ deeply communal food culture.

Filipino cuisine is more than a simple collection of recipes—it is a living record of the country’s history, migration, and the importance of bringing people together around the table.

What is Chicken Adobo?

Chicken adobo is widely regarded as the unofficial national dish of the Philippines, although countless regional and family variations exist. Long before Spanish colonisation, vinegar was already an important ingredient in Filipino cooking and was used to preserve and prepare food in the tropical climate. Spanish colonists later gave these preparations the name adobo, recognising similarities between the Filipino cooking method and Spanish preparations of the same name. Today, soy sauce, garlic, bay leaves, and black pepper are commonly added, creating the rich sweet-sour-savoury flavour that has become synonymous with Filipino home cooking.

Chicken adobo tasted wonderfully familiar yet completely different from anything I’d cooked before. Making it showed me how a handful of everyday ingredients can produce extraordinary depth of flavour, and why recipes passed down through generations often become a family’s greatest comfort food.

My experience with Chicken Adobo

Chicken adobo doesn’t demand much cooking skill, but it rewards patience. As the sauce thickened and caramelised around the chicken, the whole kitchen filled with the most incredible aroma… It was so hard to wait until it was done to try it!

This dish has quickly become one of our favourites! We LOVED the sauce and could not get enough! I will 100% be making this again 🙂

Filipino Chicken Adobo

Recipe by Billie Delpino

5.0 from 2 votes

Course: DinnerCuisine: FilipinoDifficulty: ★★☆☆☆

Servings

2

servings

Prep time

15

minutes

Cooking time

40

minutes

Tender chicken simmered in a rich, heartwarming sauce – a comforting Filipino classic with a perfect balance between salty, tangy and sweet.

Ingredients

• 6 chicken thighs (skinless and boneless) (see note 1)

• 8 garlic cloves (minced)

• 70 ml light soy sauce

• 50 ml white wine vinegar

• 3 dried bay leaves

• 1 small brown onion (finely diced)

• 2 tbsp brown sugar

• 3 tsp black pepper

• Sliced spring onions (to serve)

Directions

• Marinade the chicken in 6 of the minced garlic cloves, soy sauce, white wine vinegar, and dried bay leaves. Cover the bowl and leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, but ideally 3 hours.
• In a frying pan or skillet, heat up a small amount of vegetable oil on a medium-high heat. Place the marinaded chicken in the pan, reserving the marinade for later. Cook both sides until seared and browned. This should take at most a couple of minutes. Remove the chicken.
• In the same pan, heat up a small amount of vegetable oil – this time on a medium heat. Add the onion, with a pinch of salt, and cook for around 5 minutes – until they start to caramelise.
• Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute, until aromatic.
• Add the reserved marinade, sugar, and black pepper. Add around 170 ml water and stir. Bring the mixture to a simmer, then simmer for 5 minutes.
• Add the chicken back into the pan. Simmer in the pan (uncovered) for around 25 minutes. Make sure to turn the chicken halfway through. The sauce should be reduced to a thick syrupy sauce.
• To serve, coat the chicken in the sauce and serve with rice. Top with spring onions. It also works well with cauliflower rice and soy pickled cucumbers!

Notes

• Note 1: skin-on bone-in chicken thighs can also be used, which enrich the sauce and give it a deeper flavour. The browning/searing step gives the skin a lovely crisp as well! I used skinless and boneless thighs here for ease and speed – they absorb the flavour faster and preparation is quicker. If you also don’t want crispy chicken skin, or prefer a ligher sauce, then skinless and boneless thighs is a good alternative.