My Kitchen My World - The Philippines

I'm back in the saddle! I have been dreadfully remiss in my blogging events, like My Kitchen My World, Frugal Fridays, and I Love Baking. But I'm going to try to slowly phase myself back in, because it was fun to have the motivation to cook something I normally wouldn't or to challenge myself to go as cheap as possible. This week's My Kitchen My World country was chosen by Lauren, our moderator. We headed off to the Philippines. I visited my favorite recipe website, allrecipes.com, because it never lets me down! I found a good-looking recipe for pork adobo, and though several reviews stated that ketchup is not traditionally found in filipino adobo, I decided to go with it anyway. I guess it worked because my husband, who has eaten adobo on many occasions, said the pork tasted just right. I cut the recipe in half because we only had about a pound of pork thawed.

Pork Adobo
1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce (I reduced this to about 3/8 cup because a few reviewers suggested that it was too salty)
1/4 cup ketchup
1 1/2 tsp. minced garlic
1 bay leaf
1/2 black pepper
1 pound lean pork, cut into 1 inch cubes

Stir together the vinegar, soy sauce, ketchup, garlic, and bay leaves in a large saucepan. Add the cubed pork, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the pork is tender, about 2 1/2 hours. Stir occasionally. Serve over rice.


I was a little dubious about simmering for 2 1/2 hours, because the pork was cooked through long before then. But I followed the recipe anyway and learned that the long simmering time was necessary to reduce the sauce down - it was much too liquidy at first. The resulting pork was very delicious, tender and flavorful. Maybe a little too flavorful, I think I would reduce the soy sauce even more next time. But all four of us enjoyed our culinary trip to the Philippines.

Visit My Kitchen My World to see what the other MKMW-ers made this week.