The Sweet Side of Adobo
Sweet Chicken/Pork Adobo
The Philippine adobo is a culinary emblem of cultural adaptation and personal tradition. Inspired by the Spanish adobado, it diverged from its origins by skipping the marination process, instead relying on slow cooking to infuse meats with a uniquely Filipino mix of vinegar, soy sauce, smashed garlic, bay leaf, and peppercorns. Typically made with chicken or pork, adobo can also be crafted with seafood, vegetables, or tofu, allowing endless variations to suit different tastes and dietary preferences. The vinegar and soy sauce combination not only amplifies flavor but preserves the meat, giving adobo its signature tang and resilience—qualities that have earned it a place as the Philippines’ unofficial national dish.
In our household, we favor a blend that fuses Tagalog adobo with the Visayan humba. Humba is based on the Chinese hong-ba, a pork stew that adds black beans and muscovado sugar to the standard adobo mix. This adaptation is simmered until the pork is crumbly tender, creating a thick, sticky sauce that coats cuts of chicken, pork, hard boiled eggs, and chicken liver. The result is a balanced flavor profile of sour, bitter, and salty, with a distinct leaning toward a rich, mellow sweetness.
This fusion adobo has been part of my food memories since childhood, and I attribute it to my Aunt Biven, a Bicolana married to a Chinese expatriate. My siblings and I playfully called it adobong Intsik (Chinese adobo), largely because Aunt Biven adopted Chinese cooking to please her husband. She used to cook this dish when we visited her and her husband at their palatial home in Naga City. After the grueling 12-hour train ride from Manila, we would arrive to find her dining table laden with dishes, always including her husband’s favorite adobo.
Aunt Biven and my mother, Nanay Edeng, were close in age and in spirit. Together with their siblings, they grew up in poverty in Buhi, a rural town in Bicol, and as teenagers, helped the family earn money dancing at a saloon far from home. It was there that Aunt Biven met her future husband, a successful Chinese trader who promised her a better future.
Despite her wealth acquired through marriage, Aunt Biven remained graciously deferential to my mother. With her only daughter away at an elite girls’ college in Manila, she took to inviting my siblings and me for extended summer visits. I remember first-class train rides to Bicol in air-conditioned coaches, sit-down meals in the formal dining car, and shopping sprees. She even paraded us before her friends as her “smart sobrinos from Manila,” a title that, at the time, filled us with pride.
In her spacious kitchen, equipped with both a wood-fired "dirty kitchen" and a modern formal kitchen, Aunt Biven was a natural cook. She had mastered Chinese cooking to please her husband, refined classic Bicol dishes, and dabbled in other cuisines. Soon, her dishes—including her unique adobo variant—found a home in my mother’s kitchen. I would watch my mother and, later, my sisters cook this dish in oversized casseroles to feed our large family. The number of hard boiled eggs was always counted precisely so that each person would get at least one, lest there be conflict. When I prepare this adobo for my family of eight in the U.S., I still use the scaled-up recipe to ensure we have leftovers.
Adobo was even part of my love story with my husband. During our nine-year courtship, he often sent a pot of his mother’s cooking instead of flowers—a gesture I grew to appreciate. On our honeymoon in a mountain resort, he brought along his mom’s Tagalog adobo, and we happily subsisted on it with rice, as it aged gracefully over the days, thanks to the vinegar and cool mountain air.
The men in my family have a particular love for this mestizo version of adobo, made richer with chicken or duck eggs and chicken liver. My grandchildren especially adore hard boiled eggs soaked in savory sauce, sometimes eating only that. The adults, meanwhile, savor the sauce mixed with the deep, metallic taste of chicken liver. We pour the sauce over rice, spear an egg with our forks, take a bite, and follow it with a spoonful of sauce-soaked rice. There’s something about Filipino men and their rice. For them, adobo and rice is a meal for any time of day. And rightly so; adobo keeps well and tastes even better with age. Many Filipinos will swear by its magic after a few days in the fridge or simply left on the counter.
Adobo is more than a dish. It’s a reflection of family, tradition, and the way food preserves our memories and stories. Every adaptation, including Aunt Biven’s Chinese-inspired adobo, is a reminder of the love, resilience, and heritage that live on in every meal.
