![Slow-Cooker Picadillo](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/20/multimedia/sd-slow-cooker-picadillo-vqgz/sd-slow-cooker-picadillo-vqgz-mediumThreeByTwo440.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
Coconut Milk Chicken Adobo
Updated Feb. 29, 2024
![Coconut Milk Chicken Adobo](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/10/09/dining/08Filipinorex5-adobo/merlin_160617717_fd914956-d1b1-4f42-8043-9a6748a56183-articleLarge.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
- Total Time
- 1¾ hours
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
Advertisement
Ingredients
- 2tablespoons coconut oil
- 15garlic cloves, roughly chopped
- 2teaspoons whole black peppercorns, plus 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ½teaspoon red-pepper flakes
- 4pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken drumsticks and thighs
- 1cup unsweetened coconut milk
- ½cup coconut vinegar
- ½cup soy sauce
- 8fresh bay leaves
- Cooked rice, for serving
Preparation
- Step 1
In a large pot, heat the coconut oil over medium-high until shimmering. Add the garlic, whole peppercorns, freshly ground pepper and red-pepper flakes, drop the temperature to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, until garlic is toasted and softened and mixture is fragrant, about 5 minutes.
- Step 2
Add the chicken, skin-side down, and cook over medium-high, undisturbed, until fat starts to render, about 5 minutes.
- Step 3
Stir in the coconut milk, coconut vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaves and 1 cup water, and let the mixture come to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until the chicken feels loosened and just about falling off the bone, stirring halfway through, about 1 hour.
- Step 4
Increase the temperature to medium-high and cook, stirring occasionally, until sauce is thickened to a velvety gravy, about 15 minutes. Serve chicken and sauce over rice.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
Coconut vinegar? Is there a substitute for that?
Is there a reasonable substitute for coconut vinegar?
Coconut vinegar is easily found at Asian grocery stores, most regular stores, and online. Sugarcane vinegar is a good substitute. If you can’t get those, regular white vinegar is best in Filipino adobo recipes.
If I had to find a replacement for coconut vinegar, I'd go with rice wine vinegar. Also in step 3 where your simmering the sauce for an hour, it might help to put a lid half-way covered so you don't lose a lot of water by evaporation. Check half way through and if it's too watery, maybe dispense with the lid.
Two tips: 1. Coconut vingegar is at at Whole Foods (International aisle) and maybe at your local market. It's a very mild, low acid vinegar and if you only needed a tbls or 2, subbing apple cider is fine. But 4 oz? That's a lot. It will affect the dish. 2. I make this in a pressure cooker. After browning chicken, I add other ingredients (with a bit less liquid - no evaporation); cook 5 minutes on Soup button (no boil), w/15 minute release. Absolutely Fabulous, with more intense flavor!
I took the garlic out of the pot with a slotted spoon before I put chicken in (Step 2) to brown… put garlic back in on top of the chicken once it was all skin down.
I regularly use unseasoned rice vinegar as a substitute for coconut vinegar. General rule when substituting coconut vinegar is to seek a vinegar that has as much a neutral colour/flavour as possible.
I have made many adobo dishes but this is up there with the best. So simple and it had a nice subtle coconut background note to the adobo flavors. Not overwhelming at all. I had to render the chicken skin in two batches so I took out the garlic with the first batch to prevent the garlic from burning. Served over jasmine rice with some sriracha.
You can find coconut vinegar at your local Asian market. If you can't find any then plain white vinegar is a fine substitute.
I am Filipina and have made my chicken adobo only one way, which did not include anything coconut. I very cautiously decided to make Ms. Dimayuga's recipe for Christmas 2019 and it did not disappoint. I followed the recipe, except toned down the red pepper (red pepper?!) for my guests with milder tastes. The meat fell off the bone and the coconut flavor added a different element to a familiar favorite. To those who worry about the oiliness/separation: it is common and happens as the fat renders.
Whole Foods carries coconut vinegar
You can use boneless chicken, just decrease the amount of braising liquid and time.
You can rice vinegar if you can’t find coconut vinegar. Rice vinegar is easily found at your local supermarket in the Asian food section. Vinegar is chemically speaking a diluted form of acetic acid. It can be made naturally by the oxidation of alcohol. So depending on the country of origin vinegar is made using fermented rice , coconut sap , apple cider or grain. Once the fermented product is oxidized you get vinegar.
After a few attempts and phone calls I was able to find Coconut Vinegar in an small Vietnamese Grocery store. Strangely, it wasn't available in my local big chain Korean grocery which almost always has everything Asian and ten different types of it! The dish was amazingly good; I can see how regular white vinegar would be too heavy-handed for it. Make the effort to find a store that carries the Coconut version or order it online. It'll be worth the wait!
At a very upscale price! For less expensive, check your local Asian grocery store and it'll probably be about half the price. Side plus: you get to support a local community business!
I think it’s fabulous. Watch her video along with the recipe and follow her sequence of what to put in and when! Had to use peanut oil instead of coconut oil and rice vinegar instead of coconut vinegar- still fantastic. Kudos to Angela and to cooking of the Philippines!
I love adding coconut milk to my pork adobo! With chicken, I keep it traditional. My mom would roll over in her grave if I messed with the chicken adobo. :) But I bet this is yummy!
I don’t add water to make the sauce more easily reduced. Just coconut milk, vinegar and soy sauce. Also Japanese soy sauce is not great for this recipe. Substitute cane vinegar or white distilled if you can’t find coconut. Cane vinegar is the most popular vinegar in the Philippines anyway.
Glad I watched the video. The chef doesn't add the crushed garlic until she adds the chicken. There also seems to be a serrano-type chili that gets added whole at that point, too.
Bothering me that the video of how to cook this dish is not the same as the written directions. She adds her garlic in after the chicken and does not add water. I followed the written recipe. And as it is sitting here cooking I already know that I will have to remove the chicken at the end and let the sauce thicken. It is way too watery with the water and needs to be reduced. My garlic burned (a total rookie mistake on my part, I should have known better when reading the recipe).
Love this very forgiving recipe, using different vinegars and sometimes adapting for skinless boneless thighs. I like to add a can of diced tomatoes toward the end and, if I’m out of rice, new potatoes are nice.
Delicious! Used boneless, skinless chicken thighs to cut down on fat content and eliminate soggy skin. Subbed coconut amino acids for soy sauce to lower the sodium and up the coconut factor. Marinated chicken overnight in 1 can coconut milk, coconut vinegar and coconut aminos, per recipe. Prepped aromatics per recipe and simmered everything for 25 minutes, adding a dried guajillo chili pepper for some heat. Sauce was sour and did not thicken, so added cornstarch slurry and a squirt of honey. YUM
I've made this numerous times, usually w boneless thighs <4lbs, but make all the sauce (I don't add h2o), and it's my absolute favorite version of adobo! Coconut aminos for soy sauce works v well, as does rice vinegar. Excellent, easy, delicious recipe!
I substitute rice vinegar and dry bay leaves for this amazingly delicious dish. Coconut rice by Tejal Rao and cucumber salad with soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, and red flakes. It has become the staple of our family dinner.
Flavorful, tender, savory! One of our go-to weeknight chicken dishes. I found this dish easy to prep and overall easy to cook as well. We opted to served with mango, red onion, and cilantro salad. Chicken was super juicy.
for the newer American cooks like myself who didn't watch the video of the recipe developer making this dish: the coconut milk that Angela refers to is the one from the can, not the carton. I have made it both ways, and the one from can is vastly superior. I was only able to reduce the liquid to about half or smaller than its original size after about 1.25 hrs of cooking, but once you taste the sauce, you'll know from the richness that it's enough. enjoy!
So I followed the recipe for the most part, however I did not have coconut vinegar, and I put everything into a crockpot instead of on the stove. I cooked for 8 hours on low, and the meat was falling off the bone : ). Sadly, I wasn't really wowed by the flavor, I don't know if it's because it cooked for so long and that somehow affected the flavor or something. But yeah, sort of reminded me of adobo but it was missing something
There are two NYT recipes for coconut-milk-based chicken adobo. We've made both, have liked both, & have come up with a hybrid version that uses what we think are the best features of each (plus the most helpful comments from readers). Our version most closely resembles this one, with more heat & no whole peppercorns. We use boneless, skinless chicken thighs and skip the complexity of sauteing or broiling them separately; we just throw everything into the Dutch oven and simmer for a long time.
So good. One of the only recipe’s from NYT where I haven’t had to make any substitutions. A
Traditional or not, this was fantastic. A total flavor bomb. Yes that amount of garlic is necessary. I followed others' advice and made it in the instant pot (6 min on, 10 min release using boneless chicken thighs) which turns this into a one pot, weeknight friendly meal we'll be having on repeat. I did use some corn starch to thicken, again to hasten the plating process.
Advertisement