Philippine adobo

Philippine adobo (from Spanish: adobar: "marinade", "sauce" or "seasoning" / English: /əˈdoʊboʊ/, Tagalog pronunciation: [ɐdobo]) is a popular Filipino dish and cooking process in Philippine cuisine. In its base form, meat, seafood, or vegetables are first browned in oil, and then marinated and simmered in vinegar, salt and/or soy sauce, and garlic. It is often considered the unofficial national dish in the Philippines.

The cooking method for the Philippine adobo is indigenous to the Philippines. The various precolonial peoples of the Philippine archipelago often cooked or prepared their food with vinegar and salt in various techniques to preserve them in the tropical climate. Vinegar, in particular, is one of the most important ingredients in Filipino cuisine, with the main traditional types being coconut, cane, nipa palm, and kaong palm. These are all linked to traditional alcohol fermentation.

There are four main traditional cooking methods using vinegar in the Philippines: kiniláw (raw seafood in vinegar and spices), paksíw (a broth of meat with vinegar and spices), sangkutsá (pre-cooked braising of meat in vinegar and spices), and finally adobo (a stew of vinegar, garlic, salt/soy sauce, and other spices). It is believed that paksíw, sangkutsá, and adobo are all derivations of kiniláw. They are also related to cooking techniques like sinigáng and pinangát na isdâ that also have a sour broth, albeit using fruits like calamansi, tamarind, unripe mangoes, bilimbi, santól, and star fruit as souring agents instead of vinegar.

When the Spanish Empire colonized the Philippines in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, they encountered the adobo cooking process. It was first recorded in the 1613 dictionary Vocabulario de la lengua tagala compiled by the Spanish Franciscan missionary, Pedro de San Buenaventura. He referred to it as adobo de los naturales ("adobo of the native [peoples]").

The Spanish also applied the term adobo to any native dish that was marinated before consumption. However, the concept of cooking adobo already existed long before the arrival of the Spanish in 1521.

In the 1794 edition of the Vocabulario, it was applied to quilauìn (kinilaw) a related but different dish which also primarily uses vinegar. In the 1711 Visayan dictionary Vocabulario de la lengua Bisaya, the term guinamus (verb form: gamus) was used to refer to any kind of marinades (adobo), from fish to pork. Other terms for precolonial adobo-like dishes among the Visayan peoples are dayok and danglusi. In modern Visayan, guinamós and dayok refer to separate dishes. Dishes prepared with vinegar, garlic, salt (later soy sauce), and other spices eventually came to be known solely as adobo, with the original term for the dish now lost to history.

While the Filipino adobo and Spanish style adobo share vinegar and garlic, they are culturally distinct dishes with different ingredients and culinary traditions. Unlike the Spanish and Latin American adobo, the main ingredients of Philippine adobo are ingredients native to Southeast Asia, which include vinegar (made from palm sap or sugarcane), soy sauce (typically substituting salt), black peppercorns, and bay leaves (traditionally Cinnamomum spp. leaves; but in modern times, usually Laurus nobilis). Unlike Spanish and Latin American adobo, Philippine adobo does not traditionally use chilis, paprika, oregano, or tomatoes. Instead, they only share similarities in their primary use of vinegar and garlic. Philippine adobo has a characteristically salty and sour, and often sweet taste, in contrast to Spanish and Mexican adobos, which are spicier or infused with oregano.

While the Philippine adobo can be considered adobo in the Spanish sense—a marinated dish—the Philippine usage is much more specific to a cooking process (rather than a specific recipe) and is not restricted to meat. Typically, pork or chicken, or a combination of both, is slowly cooked in vinegar, crushed garlic, bay leaves, black peppercorns, and soy sauce. It is served with white rice. It was traditionally cooked in small clay pots (palayok or kulon); but today, metal pots or woks (kawali) are largely used instead.