hey everyone welcome to Pai's kitchen today we are making Filipino chicken adobo when I first
launched Pai's kitchen I actually got a request for my version of this recipe and I was super excited
because I love Filipino food I feel like Filipinos and Thais or brothers and sisters from another
mother and so I'm going to show you my version of this recipe but if you've got your own recipe
and you do things differently would love to see how you do it so don't forget to let me know in
the comments alright let's get started so the two main ingredients of chicken adobo is soy sauce and
vinegar so we're going to start by marinating our chicken in those two ingredients so I've got here
some soy sauce now this is Filipino soy sauce now you don't have to use Filipino soy sauce you can
use Chinese or Japanese soy sauce but I wouldn't use Thai soy sauce that's the one thing I wouldn't
do because I notice that Thai soy sauce is so much lighter than the Filipino version that it will it
won't have as rich of a color and flavor so this is the one I got that's available at my local
store Filipino fans let me know which friend you like and whatnot I'm sure other people would love
to hear about it as well so this is Filipino cane vinegar as you can see it's a little bit cloudy it
looks kinda like coconut water if you can't find it or you don't want to buy whole new vinegar I
would use apple cider vinegar or something that's a little milder and smoother because this one is
cane vinegar and if you taste it straight up it's way smoother than white vinegar so my rule of
thumb would be use a vinegar that you can actually taste straight up and it doesn't make you you know
go bad and now I'm gonna go in with tons of black pepper and so this recipe is going to be salty at
zingy and tender braised chicken mmm mmm so good alright so I'm going in with my chicken bone-in
skin-on chicken thighs and it's very important that you do bone-in because the bones as a chicken
brace will make the sauce really rich and now I'm going to let this marinate for about 20 minutes
basically what I do is I do this first and then I go and chop my vegetables and do the rest of
it and by the time I'm done with those these are ready to go all right the first thing I'm going
to do is saute the onions now I know that not every adobo recipe uses onions in fact I think
most doable recipes don't call for onions but I really feel that the natural sweetness of the
onions balance out the salty and the sour zing you could also just add a little bit of sugar if
you want but I just think you know adding onions make the sauce a little bit richer as well so I'm
going to get that sauteed until it's soft and browned caramelize and sweet now you want to
keep the heat quite low because you don't want the onions to burn before they have a chance to really
soften and if you get a lot of brown bits on the bottom before the onions are soft like they're
still quite stiff right now I use deglaze it with a little bit of water and that'll help the onions
soften and then it'll prevent anything from burning to the bottom of your pan all right so
once the onions are almost done you want to go in with the garlic so I've got lots of chopped
garlic here there you go and just cook the garlic just for a couple minutes until it's softened a
little bit you want to get the flavor from the garlic infused into the oil my chicken still has
a few minutes to go for the marinade so I'm just gonna turn this off and you know turn it back on
when it's ready and definitely this is something you can do you don't have to wait for the chicken
to be done before you get this all started alright so the chicken is ready to go so I'm going to turn
this back on what I'm going to do this is also my trick I'm going to push the onions aside and
make room so I can sear the skin of the chicken a little bit this step is optional but browning meat
as a little extra level of flavor so you know you get a chance to do it why not write these squeeze
bottles for oil so useful it really helps you control the amount quite well you want to shake
off the marinade as much as you can you don't want to get too much liquid in at this point I love the
sound of that sizzle and you run out of room and you got a redistribute the onions you go you do
what you got to do so when you choose a pan for this choose a pan that's large enough so that the
chicken will be can live in one layer I'm gonna let the chicken sort of sear just for a minute
I've got some nice browning going on on my chicken so you know I'm good to go and now I'm gonna pour
in all of the marinade ooh and turn the heat down down down down I'm gonna flip the chicken
actually because I want the meat to be submerged and I'm also going to add a little bit of water
just to bring the level of the sauce up to about right under where the skin is and now I'm going
to bring this to a simmer just a gentle simmer just like that and then I'm going to cover it
okay you want so you wanna a pot or skillet with a tight-fitting lid let that cover I'm going to turn
heat lower a little bit and now we're going to let this go for 30 minutes or until it's fork-tender
at about halfway through I'm going to flip the chicken so the top gets as much love as the
bottom all right it's been 30 minutes let's take a look mmm by the way while you weren't looking I
added some bay leaves which I forgot to add in the beginning but yes bay leaves that's a nice flavor
so now flip the chicken back over and reduce the sauce because right now there's a little too much
sauce and the sauce is a little too diluted so I mean technically you could eat it like this if
you want it turn this on high so I'm going to let this reduce for a few minutes basically until I
like the look of the sauce and you know I'll also come and baste it every once in a while because I
think it helps with the color of the skin as well and the sauce is going to get darker and richer as
we reduce I like the look of that see how it's now luscious and the bubbles are a little bit
thicker now I'm going to taste it now in the times that I've made a Drobo I've never actually had to
adjust anything but it's always good to taste mmm that's good nice and zingy but it's well
balanced all right I'm ready to eat all right this is totally my size I coming through but I am going
to sprinkle on a little bit of chopped cilantro you can do green onions but I really like the
flavor of cilantro I think that freshness really works well with the richness of the sauce all
right this one looks pretty good and always always have this with rice I find that the zing enos of
the vinegar really needs some aromatic jasmine rice to mellow it out mmm that's fork-tender
so good it's exactly what I need right now mmm it's zingy from the vinegar but not it's
not vinegary either it's a kind of brightness that works perfectly with the rich dark meat
chicken the onions a little bit sweet balancing everything out oh my god I mean this was so easy
very short ingredient list definitely a weeknight dinner material so I hope you give this a try and
when you do don't forget to send me some photos Facebook Twitter Instagram the recipe will be on
hot Thai Kitchen calm and as I said earlier if you have your own recipe of adobo I would love
to see how you make it you know it's always fun for me to see you know what else you guys do so
I hope you enjoy the show and I will see you next time for your next delicious adventure