Basic Chicken Adobo
(Please
quibble with the recipe and make changes.
I’m begging you.)
Equipment:
glass
bowl or tupperware for marinating
sauce
pan or casserole
baking
pan/sheet for broiling (line with foil/Silpat to avoid scrubbing)
tongs/fork/chopsticks
for moving hot food around
stirring
things
chopping
stuff if you need to cut up meat
Ingredients:
2
lbs chicken wings, legs & thighs
1C
– 1.5C vinegar (rice or cane or ???)
¼
- ½ C soy sauce (or 1 - 1.5 Tbs salt)
3
bay leaves
1
Tbs whole peppercorns
12
garlic cloves
optional:
(1
or 2 crushed/torn dried peppers – med or hot)
(
½C – 1C coconut milk)
Prep: (super-duper easy)
If
you are working with a whole chicken, or quarters, cut the bird at the
joints. (Freeze the breasts for
something else – or use them tonight if you are marinating for tomorrow.)
Hit
the garlic cloves once with a pot, or that “tenderizing hammer” you got with a kitchen
set at some point. Remove the papery
skin.
Into
the marinating vessel, add the vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaves, peppercorns,
smacked and partially crushed garlic cloves (and any optional
ingredients). Stir to combine.
Snuggle
the chicken pieces into the liquid.
Cover,
place in the fridge and marinate for an hour or up to overnight.
(You
can peel some potatoes or yams to add in chunks when you start the cooking if you’d like.)
Cook! (if possible even easier)†
Pour
all the ingredients into your saucepan/casserole (including optional
tubers). Get the chicken down into the
liquid. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes. At about 15 minutes, turn over or re-snuggle
the chicken in the sauce.
(Another
optional: In the last 5 min of cooking, add a hard boiled egg or two).
Remove
all the big chunks.
Use
your stirring spoon to smash up a few pieces of the softened garlic into the
sauce. Turn up the heat to reduce the
sauce to coat-the-back-of-a-spoon thickness.
At the same time…
Place
the chicken pieces under the broiler to crisp any skin (about 4 min for each
side of wings and legs, and about 5 just on the skin side of the thighs.)
Return
everything to the thickened sauce.
Serve
over rice or with stir-fried and/or grilled veg (bok-choi or cabbage – always a
good idea).
Refrigerate
any leftovers for easy food the next day.
Or freeze for much later. (This
is the kind of thing that loves to be doubled – cook 1x, eat 2x)
† I've looked over a bunch of crockpot recipes. Can't vouch, but the consensus seems to be:
Use 2 or so onions sliced into rings to create a platform for the chicken.
No need to marinate - as Madge the Manicurist used to say, "You're soaking in it."
Use the same recipe, maybe add a little water to make sure everything is snuggled into the liquid.
Cook at Hi for 3-ish hours
Cook at Low for 6-ish hours
Skin on and bone in are essential for this version.
The broil-flip-broil is nice, but not essential.
Attention Paleo-Peeps! (And other people who are avoiding extra sugar)
No sugar is needed as long you have bones and skin to add richness to the sauce. The large amounts of sugar in many of these crock-pot recipes is needed to give body and as a thickener when gelatin and fat are absent.
2 comments:
love the experimentation :) i haven't made adobo before so I have no advice to impart unfortunately... looks like some tasty results!
Heh heh heh... Make some and then the quibbling can start!
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