Pork Belly and Chicken Liver Adobo
- Cuisine : Filipino
- Course : Lunch/Dinner
- Recipe Type : Offal, Pork
- Main Ingredients : Chicken Liver, Eggs, Garlic, Pork Belly
The Philippine-style adobo is a simple and very easy dish to cook. It has simple main ingredients that are very easy to find or you would probably have on hand if you do a lot of cooking at home. It is basically meat that this allowed to slowly simmer and cook in a combination of soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, bay leaves and peppercorns.
Filipino families typically would have their own version of this dish and set the vinegar/soy sauce ratio according to their preference. For us, we like it to be on the sour side. The trick is to add a little more vinegar or soy sauce towards the end of cooking until you have the taste according to your preference.
In this version of adobo, we add mirin to add a little hint of sweetness. For the meat, we use pork belly and we also add chicken livers. The sour and salty flavor of the sauce goes very well with the smooth and creamy texture coming from the fat in the pork belly. Then we get the rich and gamey flavor of the chicken liver – it’s the perfect umami flavor for us!
Check out the recipe below and short video that shows the cooking process.
Ingredients
Instructions
- In a pot, add pork, mirin, garlic, peppercorns, and bay leaves; cover the pot and cook in medium-low heat until the pork belly has released its water content and rendered its fat. If you find that the mirin dries out before the pork starts releasing water content, just add 1/2 cup of water. After about 40 minutes, all the water would have evaporated and you would be left with pork belly that has reduced to half of its original size, and frying on its own fat.
- Turn off the heat on the stove. Scoop out the rendered fat. You can discard the fat, or, if you're like us, you would let it cool down and store it in the fridge for future use (flavor infused, rendered fat is gold!)
- Add the soy sauce, white vinegar and water; cook in medium-low heat for about 45 to 60 minutes or until the pork belly is tender. Add 1/2 cup of water at a time if the liquid dries out.
- When the pork belly is tender to your liking, add the chicken livers; let it simmer for about 8 minutes or until the livers are cooked.
- When the chicken livers are cooked, add the hard boiled or hard steamed eggs.
- Taste it. And add more soy sauce or vinegar, depending on your taste preference. You can also add a little bit of sugar if you want a little more hint of sweetness.
- At this point, your adobo is ready to be served. But, if you want go for the extra oomph, keep going through the next steps :-)
- Now for the extra oomph, take the pork belly and chicken livers out of the sauce and let them cool down to room temperature.
- When the pork belly and chicken livers have cooled down, pan fry them on medium heat; just enough so that you get caramelization on the meat, about 2 to 3 minutes on each side.
- Put the pot back on the stove to warm it up then add the pan fried pork belly and chicken livers back in the sauce.
- Serve the adobo with plain rice and a side of cut tomatoes. Sprinkle the rice and adobo with toasted garlic as garnish.
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