Original Filipino Style Adobo

Adobo is a traditional Filipino dish where chicken, pork, squid, sometimes water spinach, or long beans are cooked in soy sauce and vinegar primarily. I usually add garlic, onion, sugar, and ground pepper on the marinade. There are other techniques where meat is soaked in sprite overnight to make it more tender and sweet.

But did you know that long long ago, when Philippines was still young, even before Spaniards came here, our ancestors have a different way of cooking adobo? And they didn't use soy sauce. This ingredient was introduced to us by the Chinese through barter. If I remember my grade school history lessons, barter is the method by which our ancestors trade by exchanging goods and commodities. Like say, salt for soy sauce.

Anyways, going back to the traditional original Filipino Style adobo, our ancestors used vinegar and salt as the marinade. They use this method to preserve the meat for days. Which makes perfect sense because back then, there are no refrigerators to keep the perishables from decaying.

For today, I attempted to cook adobl the original, traditional way. Here is another one of my attempts to cooking something very common using olden techniques.

Ingredients

Pork
Vinegar
Salt
Bay leaf
Ground pepper
Honey
Onion
Garlic
Water

Procedure

Firstly, cut the pork into small cubes. Then soak it in vinegar and salt.

I placed it in the fridge for about 30 minutes

In a pan, pour some olive oil and sautee onions and garlic. Then add the pork. Sprinkle salt and peoper. Cook until all sides are brownish in color. Set the stove to low heat. To make it even more tasty, cook it a little bit more until the oils from the fats come out.

Pour about half a cup of vinegar into the pan. Let it simmer for a few minutes. After a while, add in about 1/3 cup of honey. Add half cup of water. Stir and mix. Throw in some bay leaf.

Give it a taste test. Add salt as needed. You should have a perfect blend of sour, salty, and sweet. My husband loved it. While we were having lunch, I told him about what I learned about the history if adobo.

Read more about the history of adobo here.