What does adobo mean?
“Adobo” is Spanish (comes from “adobar”) and can mean “sauce”, “seasoning”, or “marinade.”
What is the national dish of the Philippines?
The national dish of the Philippines is adobo! That’s why we decided to take on this delicious recipe challenge and try to make it ourselves. In the end, we loved the resulting dish and will definitely be making it again sometime soon.
Where does Adobo come from?
We don’t know the exact origins of adobo. However, we do know some parts. It reportedly was introduced to the Philippines from local travelers around the year 3,000 BC. Storing meat was a difficult task back then so they started storing it in salt and vinegar brines to prevent it from spoiling.
This preservative marinated meat came to be known as “adobo” when Spain came to the Phillipines. The Spaniards also added their own variations of the dish by adding traditional Spanish spices.
How to cook Filipino Pork Adobo with Pineapple
What type of pork to use for Adobo
In our case, we used about 2 lbs of pork shoulder. However, you can also substitute it with pork tenderloin or pork belly. Either should work.
Should you marinate pork adobo?
Since one meaning of “adobar” is “to marinate”, marinating is a traditional method of making this dish. However, we didn’t have much time before dinner so we skipped the marinating step. Ultimately, since we did a long slow cook in the Dutch oven, we felt that the sauce had sufficient time to permeate the meat and create really flavorful pork. But feel free to experiment yourself and try marinating it before cooking.
Do you need to sear the pork before adding the stew?
Yes! This allows the pork to caramelize on the outside. This is known as the Maillard Effect. For the same reason, we opted to sear our pineapple chunks before adding them.
What goes into the adobo sauce?
Some key components to adobo sauce include vinegar (some use rice wine vinegar but we opted for just regular white vinegar), salt (in this case we used soy sauce for extra umami), garlic, peppercorns, and bay leaves.
Traditional methods of cooking adobo
Traditionally, adobo is made by cooking it in small clay pots. However, since we don’t have those, we just used our Dutch oven to make one big delicious adobo.
Adobo is traditionally served with rice such as our adobo recipe.
Also, as mentioned above, we didn’t marinate our pork due but the traditional method calls for marinating.
Variations of Filipino Pork Adobo
As we learned when we were researching this recipe, every household seems to have their own variations of making Filipino adobo.
Not everyone makes their adobo with pineapple but since we’re big fans of mixing sweet and savory, we opted for including it. Some recipes call for marinating the pork with pineapple juice in addition to using pineapple chunks. If you want to try this, just substitute half of the water for pineapple juice.
We used pork in this recipe but chicken adobo is also very popular. If you want to try chicken instead of pork, we would definitely recommend marinating it before cooking it (since pork more easily takes up flavors from sauce). But pineapple chicken adobo sounds incredible and we’ll have to try it out in the future. Or better yet, include both types of meat for a chicken pork adobo pineapple super-recipe!
If you want to add a spicy element to this recipe, feel free to add some red pepper flakes (which would nicely pair with the sweetness from the pineapple).
Sweet & Savory GradFood Recipes
If you’re also a fan of mixing sweet and savory, check out some of our other similar recipes like Moroccan Lamb & Apricot Tagine and Egyptian Pomegranate Barley Salad.
Ok now, without further ado, here is our recipe for Pork Adobo with Pineapple. We hope you enjoy and let us know what you think in the comments below.
Filipino Pork Adobo with Pineapple
Ingredients
- 2 lbs pork shoulder cut into 2-in chunks
- ½ pineapple cored and cut into 2-in chunks
- 7 cloves garlic peeled and minced
- 2 tsp grated ginger
- 2 medium onions roughly chopped
- 1 tbsp black peppercorns
- 4 bay leaves
- ¼ cup white vinegar
- ⅓ cup low sodium soy sauce
- 2 tbsp fish sauce
- 2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 bunch green onions sliced
- 2 cups rice cooked
Instructions
- In a large pot or Dutch oven with 2 tbsp vegetable oil on medium heat, sear the pork in 2 batches for about 5 minutes each and set aside into a bowl.
- In the same Dutch oven, add another tbsp saute the onions with another tbsp vegetable oil until they start to turn translucent, about 3-5 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger and saute for another 1-2 minutes.
- Now add the pork back to the Dutch oven with onions and pour in ¾ cup water along with the vinegar, soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Bring to a very gentle simmer (I set my stove to the lowest setting) and let it simmer, partially covered, for 1 hour.
- Meanwhile, sear the pineapple chunks on a hot cast iron skillet until they start to caramelize and set aside.
- After an hour of simmering, add the pineapples to the Dutch oven. Make a slurry using 1 tbsp water with 1 tbsp cornstarch and add to the Dutch oven too. Simmer for another 5 min.
- Serve with rice and topped with sliced green onions.
Recommended Amazon Products for this Recipe:
This page may contain Amazon Affiliate links that earn us a small commission, at no additional cost to you. We only show products we personally use in our kitchen. See our disclaimer for more information.
One thought on “Filipino Pork Adobo with Pineapple”