Our best pork adobo recipe promises tender, flavorful meat in a classic adobo sauce—all achieved in the least amount of effort.
Ask anybody for the best pork adobo recipe, and they'll tell you it's their parent's, grandparent's, aunt's, or uncle's. There's no perfect adobo recipe, and no one can claim to be the absolute best. So we're not. This adobo recipe is just our best version of the dish, one that promises tender, flavorful meat in a classic adobo sauce—all achieved in the least amount of effort.
Adobo refers to the Filipino dish and cooking technique where ingredients are braised in vinegar with salt (usually soy sauce), garlic, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Almost anything can be adobo: meat, fish, seafood, vegetables. You’ll find endless variations on adobo across the Philippines, each with their own unique flavors, ingredients, spices, and textures.
Prepare pork belly: Slice pork belly into ½-inch thick slices. Depending on the thickness of your cut, each piece should more or less 1 ½ inches long. Smaller cuts are fine.
Marinate pork belly: Combine ¾ cup soy sauce, white vinegar, black peppercorns, garlic, and bay leaves in a large bowl or container. Add pork belly slices, cover, and marinate in the fridge for 4 hours up to overnight. Flip and toss the pork halfway through to marinate evenly.
Cook adobo: The next day, transfer all the ingredients into a pot over high heat. Add just enough water to cover, about 2 cups. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low, maintaining a simmer. Cover pot with lid and cook until the pork is fork-tender, about 30 minutes.
Reduce sauce: Once pork is tender, remove the lid and turn the heat back up to high. Add 2 tablespoons soy sauce or more according to taste, up to ¼ cup. Let pork cook at a full boil, stirring every 5 minutes until the sauce thickens and the pork darkens in color, 15-30 minutes. Serve hot with steamed rice.
This recipe was developed for pork adobo, and won't work as well for chicken. The full boil at the end of the recipe is beneficial to the pork’s skin, breaking it down to give your sauce a gelatinous texture. But if you do this to chicken, it will most likely fall apart.
Yes you can! Using pre-sliced liempo cuts from the supermarket will yield smaller pieces than prescribed. In that case, reduce the final ¼ cup of soy sauce to ⅛ cup (about two tablespoons).
Yes you can! Replace 2 tbsp black peppercorns with 2-3 tsp ground black pepper.
You can adjust the consistency during the final step, while the adobo is at full boil. For a soupier adobo, stop as soon as it boils. For a dry adobo, cook it for the whole 30 minutes.
The extra soy sauce at the reduction stage provides salinity (there’s no salt in the recipe) and color. Adjust to taste by starting with two tablespoons of soy sauce, then adding another tablespoon until you reach your desired saltiness.
