The $25 Dinner: Filipino Hen Adobo With Coconut Rice

We’re excited to announce a brand new month-to-month sequence: The $25 Dinner. As soon as a month, our beloved good friend and cookbook writer Casey Elsass will make hearty, satisfying dinners that serve 4 individuals (or two, with superb leftovers), all for $25 or much less. Right here’s his first installment…

Says Casey:

Hello everybody! Listed below are my private floor guidelines:

* No assumptions. Oil, salt, pepper, and water are the freebies; the whole lot else I’ll add to the buying tally. You may need different pantry staples hiding in your kitchen, however I need to put these dinners by means of a worst-case-scenario check and store fully from scratch.
* No sneaky math. If I want two cups of rice, I’m not going to let you know it prices $1 from a bigger bag. Your complete bundle has to go towards my $25 whole.
* No reductions. I’m buying at my common mid-priced Brooklyn grocery retailer. Might I do that for much less at Aldi or Dealer Joe’s? One trillion p.c, and also you positively ought to! However I need to know you’ll be able to stroll into a daily retailer with $25 and are available out with dinner.
* No hiding. You get to see the receipts. I’ll present you precisely what I purchased and what the whole lot value, plus any buying choices I made alongside the way in which.

First up is certainly one of my all-time favourite issues to cook dinner: Filipino hen adobo with coconut rice. I’m a agency believer that one of the simplest ways to learn to cook dinner one thing is immediately from a mother, and I’m the luckiest boy on this planet as a result of my good friend Robbie’s mother, Sol Guevarra, wrote down her adobo recipe for me:

As you’ll be able to see, Sol’s recipe is for pork adobo, however hen adobo can be frequent in Filipino cooking — and, essential for this column, it was approach cheaper at my grocery retailer. The one different change I made was utilizing rice vinegar since cane vinegar may be tougher to trace down. I additionally did some strategic small-package buying: a five-ounce bottle of soy sauce, a can of hen broth as a substitute of a carton, and a one-pound bag of rice. You might have already got a few of these at residence, which suggests your dinner might be even cheaper than mine.

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

For these unfamiliar with adobo, stroll with me, would you? On this model, hen simmers till it’s very tender in a tangy, savory sauce of soy sauce, garlic, peppercorns, bay leaves, and vinegar. Individuals within the Philippines have been cooking meat in vinegar for hundreds of years, partly as a result of it helped protect meals within the tropical local weather. (The genius of pre-refrigeration culinary arts is a subject I may focus on all day.) When Spanish colonizers arrived within the 1500s, they referred to as it adobo, the Spanish phrase for marinade. Over time, soy sauce grew to become frequent in lots of variations; some regional kinds added coconut milk; possibly a diced onion discovered its approach into the pot. Like all nice residence cooking, there isn’t one single “right” adobo — there’s simply the way in which you grew up loving it.

Two fast notes earlier than we get cooking: Sol insists that you don’t stir the vinegar while you add it to the pot. She says it makes the flavour aggressively bitter, and I absolutely belief her experience. The brown sugar, then again, isn’t sacred: Sol will use honey, common sugar, mirin, something candy. I occur to love the molasses taste of darkish brown sugar, however we’ve got her permission to make use of no matter is already within the pantry. Okay, sufficient yapping, let’s get cooking!

Filipino Hen Adobo With Coconut Rice
Serves 4

Hen Adobo
3 kilos bone-in, skin-on hen thighs and drumsticks
1/4 cup soy sauce
4 garlic cloves, smashed
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil or any impartial oil
1 (14.5-oz) can hen broth
3 dried bay leaves
1 tbsp complete black peppercorns
2 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tbsp packed darkish 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 forward: Mix the hen, soy sauce, and garlic in a big zip-top bag. Seal and provides the whole lot a great shake to coat the hen. Refrigerate for a minimum of three hours or as much as 24 hours.

Make the adobo: Take away the hen from the bag, however save that marinade! We’re coming again for it in a second. Warmth the oil in a big Dutch oven, high-sided sauté pan, or braiser over medium-high warmth. Prepare the hen skin-side down and cook dinner till deeply browned, about 5 minutes. Work in batches if you should — crowding the hen won’t get you wherever good. Flip and evenly brown the opposite aspect, about three minutes extra. Should you labored in batches, now you’ll be able to crowd all of your properly browned hen into the pot.

Pour within the reserved marinade with the hen broth, then add the bay leaves and peppercorns. Carry to a boil, then cowl and scale back the warmth to medium-low. Cook dinner till the hen is superbly tender, about half-hour.

In the meantime, make the coconut rice: Put the rice in a medium bowl, cowl with loads of chilly water, and swish it round together with your hand to launch the surplus starch. Drain by means of a fine-mesh strainer, return the rice to the bowl, and repeat till the water is generally clear, often three or 4 rinses. Drain effectively.

Mix the rice, coconut milk, salt, and 1.5 cups of water in a medium saucepan. Give it a fast stir with a fork and set over medium-high warmth. Carry to a boil, stir once more, then cowl and scale back the warmth to low. Cook dinner till the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender, about quarter-hour. Take away from the warmth and let sit, nonetheless lined, for 10 minutes. Fluff with the fork.

Now again to the adobo! Uncover the pot and pour within the vinegar. Don’t stir it! Let it bubble away, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Add the brown sugar and salt, and now you’ll be able to stir. Simmer for an additional two to 5 minutes, till the sauce has lowered barely and tastes salty, tangy, savory, and somewhat candy.

Divide the coconut rice amongst bowls, high with just a few items of hen, and spoon that attractive adobo sauce everywhere in the high. As our expensive Sol says, “Serve scorching and luxuriate in.”

Thanks, Casey! Can’t anticipate extra.

Casey Elsass is a meals author, recipe developer, and cookbook writer based mostly in Brooklyn. He’s the writer of the bestselling cookbook What Can I Carry?: Recipes to Assist You Dwell Your Visitor Life and has co-authored greater than 30 cookbooks. His writing has appeared in publications together with The New York Instances, New York Journal, Bon Appétit, NPR, Food52, and, after all, Cup of Jo.

P.S. 5-ingredient dinners, together with dumpling salad and weeknight niçoise.

(Portrait of Casey Elsass by Taylor Miller. Meals images courtesy of Casey Elsass.)