The $25 Dinner: Filipino Chicken Adobo With Coconut Rice

We’re excited to announce a new monthly series: The $25 Dinner. Once a month, our beloved friend and cookbook author Casey Elsass will make hearty, satisfying dinners that serve four people (or two, with very good leftovers), all for $25 or less. Here’s his first installment…

Says Casey:

Hi everyone! Here are my personal ground rules:

* No assumptions. Oil, salt, pepper, and water are the freebies; everything else I will add to the shopping tally. You might have other pantry staples hiding in your kitchen, but I want to put these dinners through a worst-case-scenario test and shop completely from scratch.
* No sneaky math. If I need two cups of rice, I’m not going to tell you it costs $1 from a larger bag. The entire package has to go toward my $25 total.
* No discounts. I’m shopping at my regular mid-priced Brooklyn grocery store. Could I do this for less at Aldi or Trader Joe’s? One trillion percent, and you definitely should! But I want to know you can walk into a regular store with $25 and come out with dinner.
* No hiding. You get to see the receipts. I’ll show you exactly what I bought and what everything cost, plus any shopping decisions I made along the way.

First up is one of my all-time favorite things to cook: Filipino chicken adobo with coconut rice. I’m a firm believer that the best way to learn how to cook something is directly from a mom, and I’m the luckiest boy in the world because my friend Robbie’s mom, Sol Guevarra, wrote down her adobo recipe for me:

As you can see, Sol’s recipe is for pork adobo, but chicken adobo is also common in Filipino cooking — and, very important for this column, it was way cheaper at my grocery store. The only other change I made was using rice vinegar since cane vinegar can be harder to track down. I also did some strategic small-package shopping: a five-ounce bottle of soy sauce, a can of chicken broth instead of a carton, and a one-pound bag of rice. You may already have some of these at home, which means your dinner could be even cheaper than mine.

My grand total: $24.15. Eighty-five cents to spare!

For those unfamiliar with adobo, walk with me, would you? In this version, chicken simmers until it’s very tender in a tangy, savory sauce of soy sauce, garlic, peppercorns, bay leaves, and vinegar. People in the Philippines have been cooking meat in vinegar for centuries, partly because it helped preserve food in the tropical climate. (The genius of pre-refrigeration culinary arts is a topic I could discuss all day.) When Spanish colonizers arrived in the 1500s, they called it adobo, the Spanish word for marinade. Over time, soy sauce became common in many versions; some regional styles added coconut milk; maybe a diced onion found its way into the pot. Like all great home cooking, there isn’t one single “correct” adobo — there’s just the way you grew up loving it.

Two quick notes before we get cooking: Sol insists that you do not stir the vinegar when you add it to the pot. She says it makes the flavor aggressively sour, and I fully trust her expertise. The brown sugar, on the other hand, isn’t sacred: Sol will use honey, regular sugar, mirin, anything sweet. I happen to like the molasses flavor of dark brown sugar, but we have her permission to use whatever is already in the pantry. Ok, enough yapping, let’s get cooking!

Filipino Chicken Adobo With Coconut Rice
Serves 4

Chicken Adobo
3 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs and drumsticks
1/4 cup soy sauce
4 garlic cloves, smashed
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil or any neutral oil
1 (14.5-oz) can chicken broth
3 dried bay leaves
1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
2 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tbsp packed dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Coconut Rice
2 cups long-grain white rice
1 (13.5-oz) can unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Get ahead: Combine the chicken, soy sauce, and garlic in a large zip-top bag. Seal and give everything a good shake to coat the chicken. Refrigerate for at least three hours or up to 24 hours.

Make the adobo: Remove the chicken from the bag, but save that marinade! We’re coming back for it in a moment. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven, high-sided sauté pan, or braiser over medium-high heat. Arrange the chicken skin-side down and cook until deeply browned, about five minutes. Work in batches if you need to — crowding the chicken will not get you anywhere good. Flip and lightly brown the other side, about three minutes more. If you worked in batches, now you can crowd all your nicely browned chicken into the pot.

Pour in the reserved marinade with the chicken broth, then add the bay leaves and peppercorns. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook until the chicken is beautifully tender, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the coconut rice: Put the rice in a medium bowl, cover with plenty of cold water, and swish it around with your hand to release the excess starch. Drain through a fine-mesh strainer, return the rice to the bowl, and repeat until the water is mostly clear, usually three or four rinses. Drain well.

Combine the rice, coconut milk, salt, and 1.5 cups of water in a medium saucepan. Give it a quick stir with a fork and set over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, stir again, then cover and reduce the heat to low. Cook until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender, about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and let sit, still covered, for 10 minutes. Fluff with the fork.

Now back to the adobo! Uncover the pot and pour in the vinegar. Don’t stir it! Let it bubble away, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Add the brown sugar and salt, and now you can stir. Simmer for another two to five minutes, until the sauce has reduced slightly and tastes salty, tangy, savory, and a little sweet.

Divide the coconut rice among bowls, top with a few pieces of chicken, and spoon that gorgeous adobo sauce all over the top. As our dear Sol says, “Serve hot and enjoy.”

Thank you, Casey! Can’t wait for more.

Casey Elsass is a food writer, recipe developer, and cookbook author based in Brooklyn. He is the author of the bestselling cookbook What Can I Bring?: Recipes to Help You Live Your Guest Life and has co-authored more than 30 cookbooks. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, New York Magazine, Bon Appétit, NPR, Food52, and, of course, Cup of Jo.

P.S. Five-ingredient dinners, including dumpling salad and weeknight niçoise.

(Portrait of Casey Elsass by Taylor Miller. Food photos courtesy of Casey Elsass.)