Authentic Filipino Adobo Chicken Recipe Is An Easy Weeknight Dinner (6 Ingredients) by Jules All

I grew up eating my Filipina grandmother's adobo chicken. This chicken dinner is the most amazing of all Filipino recipes. Lola, as we call her, is a wonderful cook and I always looked forward to her meals, especially this savory chicken recipe.

Now that I live on my own, I have been trying to re-create Lola's incredible adobo chicken. I felt like whenever I made adobo, it wasn’t quite as good as hers. But I finally created a recipe that I think comes close to doing hers justice.

Photo credit: Jules All

To make adobo chicken at home, you will need chicken legs or thighs (read about the health benefits or protein), soy sauce, a lemon, bay leaves, brown sugar, garlic, black pepper. 

Cooking Tips: Do not use chicken breast for this dish. Chicken breast tends to dry out, and you want moist chicken. Adjust the ingredients to create a dish that fits your tastes.

Serve this authentic Filipino chicken recipe over rice for dinner with your favorite side dishes.

Cuisine: Filipino
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour and 5 minutes
Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 8 chicken legs or chicken thighs, or a combination (but not chicken breast)
• 6 - 8 tablespoons soy sauce (or gluten-free soy sauce)
• 1 whole lemon
• 3 - 4 bay leaves
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 3 - 4 cloves garlic, crushed

Here's how to make it: 

1. Put the chicken, bay leaves, lemon (instead of vinegar, which many Adobo recipes call for), black pepper (to taste), bay leaves, garlic, sugar and soy sauce into a large pot. (I put in 6 tablespoons of soy sauce, a whole lemon, which is very important, and about 1 to 2 tablespoons of sugar. It won’t seem like a lot of sauce yet in the pot.) For a gluten-free dinner use gluten-free soy sauce or tamari.
2. When all the ingredients are in, bring it to a boil. After it's boiling, reduce hear and then simmer. (You will see that the juice comes out of the chicken and magically creates a sauce that fills up the pot! You can add more soy sauce and lemon if you want, but try to keep it only half covering the meat since so much more sauce will be created as it simmers. Feel free to tinker with the ingredients if you prefer more pepper, sugar or garlic, etc.)
3. While it's simmering, make a pot of rice in a rice cooker or however you prefer to cook rice. Within an hour, you will have a fresh pot of the most savory, moist, delicious chicken ever. Serve over rice and enjoy! Store the leftover chicken and rice in airtight containers.

Recipe cooking times, nutritional information and servings are approximate and provided for your convenience. However, 30Seconds is not responsible for the outcome of any recipe, nor may you have the same results because of variations in ingredients, temperatures, altitude, errors, omissions or cooking/baking abilities. Any nutritional information is provided as a courtesy and it is up to the individual to ascertain accuracy. To ensure image quality, we may occasionally use stock photography.

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