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
Hungry for more? Subscribe to my newsletter and follow along on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram for all of the latest updates.
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!!
Everything I make from your recipes always turns out AMAZING!! I’m a convert-love your site👍
Absolutely loved this recipe! I lived in the Philippines for a while and have tried many different recipes. This one was easy and umami!
So good!! I made this tonight! My husband and I loved it! I used apple viper vinegar instead of white vinegar as that all I had it came out great! Thanks again Nagi!
what the heck is viper vinegar?
I assume she meant apple cider vinegar – that’s a reasonable alternative if you cannot find ‘cane’ vinegar (filipino white vinegar is “cane vinegar” – not the same as ‘distilled white vinegar’ that you find at most US grocery stores).
Turned out beautifully.
I couldn’t get the sauce to thicken enough so I added some corn starch and it was perfect. Next time I will use course black pepper…the peppercorns weren’t really for us. But that’s the only revision I’ll be making. Really yummy!
Great recipe, my husband loves when I make this. He says it’s even better than my step-mother’s who recently moved here from the Philippines!
Woah what a compliment, that’s amazing Julia! N x
Flavor was great and the recipe was simple and easy to follow!
It didn’t work well for me to marinade and then immediately pan-sear all the chicken – the marinade just squeezed out of the chicken and made steam rather than providing a nice sear. I ended up pulling all the chicken pieces out, leaving them on a plate to really drip off the remaining marinade, and then putting them back in a re-oiled pan with a lot of extra space, just 2 or 3 at a time.
I think next time I’ll just sear the chicken first before it ever touches the marinade. I think simmering for 25 minutes in the adobo sauce should do fine to tenderize and flavor the chicken.
I am a Filipina now living in the US. My mom might disown me for saying this, but this is by far the best chicken adobo I’ve had/made! Just the right amount of tang and sweetness. Pairs nicely with garlic fried rice!
My mom is born and raised in the Philippines and said this was the best chicken adobo she’s ever made. Enough said.
Hi guys, try serving this with soft boiled eggs by adding them just right before you take off the heat covering it in sauce ❤
YUM!! N x
I cooked it pretty much as written. Best Adobe I’ve ever made!
This was delicious! We only had breast available so modified the cooking slightly but turned out great, certainly wasn’t dry. Next time we will use thighs though
Thank you for the recipe. The flavor was good but the texture of the chicken was really dry, more like white meat. Is it because I used boneless? My husband said he loved it but he’s a white meat kinda guy. lol
Hi Tia, what cut did you use? Breast? N x
Hey Nagi,
So I used boneless, skinless thighs the first time. I made your exact recipe again and used bone in chicken thighs and it was AWESOME!! My entire family ate it up, including my picky three year old. lol.
One of my coworkers is from the Phillipines and suggested that I boil the chicken thighs in a little vinegar to really get the flavor in there. I haven’t tried that yet
Very, very good!! This recipe is a keeper!
This came out so good! The sauce was ono! I usually make adobo in my instapot, but from now I’m going stovetop with your recipe. And Im making fried rice tomorrow morning. Winner winner!
Thanks for sharing this recipe, Nagi. It’s so flavourful and delicious with just simple ingredients. I use drumsticks and apple cider vinegar, follow the directions and come out great! I love your detail explanations and the video to visualize the instructions. Hope you could come up with more Philippines recipe in the future 😁
This was so delicious- peppercorns and all – don’t hold back! So much flavour with so few ingredients. Made with the smashed cucumber salad – that was fun and easy!
I really want to make this today but am wondering if I can cook in crockpot? Can not wait to try the recipe either way!
Absolutely delicious and so so easy! We served this with the smashed cucumbers and opted for your smashed potatoes over the cauliflower as Sundays aren’t made to be healthy 🙂
It didn’t disappoint! I have 4 chicken thighs left in the fridge, toying with either this dish again on Tuesday evening or branching out to your Vietnamese caramel coconut chicken (which we’ve not made before). I’m sure either option will leave everyone very satisfied!
This turned out really well and very flavorful. After living in the Philippines for a couple years, I have been trying to replicate the flavor we had there, and this is the closest recipe I have found. I noticed there is a wide variety in how people prepare their adobo, and after playing around with this recipe as a base, I recognized a few things I prefer that make it more like the region where we lived: 1/2 the vinegar, double the garlic and bay leaves, slice the garlic into thin rounds (don’t mince). Most American stores sell Japanese soy sauce, but Filipino soy sauce tastes very different, which I never knew before living there – we use Japanese soy sauce usually, because the Filipino kind is hard to find, but if you see it somewhere, get it! (Silver Swan or Datu Puti brands.) For the chicken, I often use a mix of cuts, including white and dark meat. I noticed Filipinos where we lived just took any cut, skin on or off, and hacked it into a ~2 oz pieces to use in adobo. This was sold in stores as “adobo cut chicken.” Finally, if we feel like it, we sometimes throw some vegetables in. Where we lived, the most common additions were potatoes (sliced in large rough cubes, thrown in for the entire simmer time) and/or green beans or asparagus (thrown in just for the last couple minutes of simmering).
Wow, what a delicious dish! The whole family loved every morsel. I didn’t use whole peppercorn but I ground a lot of Cambodian black pepper. Thanks Nagi, I can’t wait to eat this again!