Chicken Adobo & Coconut Ginger Rice

Call us recipe renegades if you will. We just cannot follow those things! We try, but it always fails. In a good way. A few weeks ago, we hosted a filipino-themed dinner party with a few friends, and chicken adobo was on the menu. Adobo is something we’ve never made or even tasted, but we knew we had to try it. We poked around the world wide web to get the basics and consulted foodie experts for a couple of tips. We wanted the dish to be authentic, but with our track record of switching the game up, we already knew the final dish would only border the real thing and then veer just a little to the left. With that knowledge in hand, it was ready, set, go time. We may not be too close to the original version, but rules are meant to be broken.

A tried and true adobo has a few basic ingredients: vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, bay leaves and peppercorns. After that, there seems to be variations and additions depending on who you know or what you read. Maybe a bit of coconut milk, fresh ginger or even ketchup thrown in the mix. We decided to use apple cider vinegar and brown sugar for sweetness, cornstarch to thicken and browning the chicken first to seal in the marinade. Coconut sounded like a fabulous element to throw in, but not in our adobo itself. Instead we put it in rice, which added a subtle sweetness that mellows the chicken’s tangy flavor.