Dishes

Adobo

ah-DOH-boh

Also Known As Filipino Adobo Distinguishes the Philippine indigenous vinegar-cooking method from the unrelated Iberian adobo marinade the Spanish name was borrowed from.

Citation Formats

General Reference

Food and Drink Atlas. "Adobo." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://food.interactiveatlas.org/dishes/adobo.

APA Style

Food and Drink Atlas. (n.d.). Adobo. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://food.interactiveatlas.org/dishes/adobo

BibTeX

@misc{foodanddrinkatlas-adobo,
  author = {Food and Drink Atlas},
  title = {Adobo},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://food.interactiveatlas.org/dishes/adobo},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Adobo is a Filipino method of cooking meat, usually chicken or pork, braised in vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, bay leaf and black pepper. The vinegar based technique predates the sixteenth century Spanish colonization of the Philippines as a practical way of preserving meat in a tropical climate; Spanish colonizers later gave it the name adobo, from their own word for marinade, without changing the underlying native method. There is no single canonical recipe, and family and regional variation is genuinely wide, including a coconut milk version, adobo sa gata, traditional in southern Luzon.

Facts

Disputed

Origin Period, From (Year)

from 1580 2

the subject's own accountMarks the late 16th century, when Spanish colonizers applied the name adobo to the pre-existing indigenous Filipino vinegar-cooking method due to its superficial similarity to Iberian adobo; the indigenous method itself developed independently and is undated.

Origin Period, To (Year)

to 1850 2

the subject's own accountMarks one of the earliest print references to adobo, in Mariano de Rementeria y Fica's 1850 Manual del Cocinero, Repostero, Pastelero, Confitero y Botillero.

Origin Region

The Philippine archipelago, prior to Spanish contact. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections