Love For Filipino Food
Filipino food is amazing. Let me say that again, Filipino food is AMAZING! I think it’s the most underrated and unexplored cuisines out there. Â I’m not quite sure why that is either. I mean, every cuisine seems to need a vessel or a product to put itself on the map. Â Adobo is pretty popular but is it Pho popular? For example, Pho came out HARD in the 90’s and took Vietnamese food to the next level in every major city. Hell, it even gave life to a multi-million dollar company called Sriracha. But, Filipino food just hasn’t had that vessel yet. Â Senior Sisig in SF has definitely helped to put Filipino food on the map in the Bay Area, but it’s so far from what really lies beneath the amazing food that the culture has to offer.
But It’s Not Vegan…YET
There’s just one problem with Filipino food…it’s nowhere near Vegan. In fact, I feel like every dish has a little bit of pork fat sitting within its deep flavors and that’s where I struggle with the food today.  I loved it so much when I was eating meat, that I found myself getting addicted to it’s indulgence of crispy pork, stewed pork blood, adobo chicken, and fried fish. But it wasn’t until I started switching to a plant-based diet, to stop my chest pains, where I realized how dangerous Filipino food really was. In fact, Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in the  Philippines, with over 170,000 deaths per year. This still doesn’t top the United State’s toll of over 600,000 per year, but it’s still bad.
What are we to do? Well, we have to hit the reset button. It’s the button that we push to relinquish our addictive habits and just start over. Â To assist with this process, we have to start recreating the diet to be healthy, meaningful, and full of life, without taking away the traditional flavors of the food. I truly believe that if we take out the animal products that are present in every Filipino dish, and substitute it with great vegetable and fruit replacements, we’ll be on our way to finding a major way to prevent heart disease for everyone who loves the cuisine.
To kick shit off right, we’re going to do a traditional flavored Adobo dish made with Jackfruit instead of Chicken. Â Jackfruit Adobo is the beginning of what I hope to be a series of great Filipino recipes I can share with the world. Jackfruit by itself is crazy good because it shreds like meat and has a texture very comparable to shredded pork or chicken. I was stoked to find out that Trader Joe’s is now carrying Jackfruit in brine, so if you’re looking for where to get this stuff, stock up at Trader Joe’s!
Authentic From The Ground Up
If we’re going to make Filipino Adobo, then you have to use the right soy sauce and vinegar! If you can find Datu Puti brand stuff, you’ll be able to keep this dish REAL AF. Â I have to give credit to my girlfriend Kitty, for putting me on game with this stuff…she’s super picky about her Filipino food being authentic, so best believe that the soy and vinegar make all the difference!
I threw a mix of soy and vinegar in with a touch of peppercorn, garlic, and bay leaf. Potatoes act as a really great complement to the dish, but also help to thicken the sauce up later, so we’ll throw in a small potato here that’s been cut into large chunks.
We’ll let this simmer for about 15 minutes to let all the flavors blend together.
Jackfruit Magic
While we’re waiting for this, we can start on shredding the Jackfruit. I like to give the Jackfruit a good rinse under cold water, to remove some of that brine flavor and salt. Since this dish will be salty enough from the soy sauce, this step is really helpful to reduce our sodium intake.
Once we get everything shredded up in a mixing bowl, we’ll want to dredge the jackfruit in a little bit of flour so we can give it a sear and a nice browning on the fruit. It will help to dry it out a little bit too, so the texture is best for the stew.
Heat a non-stick pan up with a little bit of oil to give the Jackfruit that nice golden browning. This should only take a couple of minutes done over a medium heat.
For some touch of flavor, I sprinkled the Jackfruit with some garlic powder and onion powder. Â I could literally just eat it like that over rice, it’s so good! When everything has a nice color to it, we’ll toss this into the pot of our simmering soy and vinegar combo and let it go, for another 15 minutes.
Lastly, and this is totally optional, is the pine nuts. I love pine nuts, especially when they are toasted because they give a very hearty and meaty punch of flavor to the dish. Almost pork-like…I kid you not! So we’ll take some toasted pine nuts and mince them up real fine, to give our adobo just a little more dimension.
While we wait for the jackfruit to absorb all the  flavors, we’ll need to do a couple of quick steps to complete the meal.
Rice is so critical to Filipino food…that’s gotta be the understatement of the year! Rice is the best vehicle to soak up all the vinegar and soy sauce that the dish brings. Now the trick to fluffy rice is stick your finger into the bottom of the pan, then raise it back up until it just touches the surface of the rice. You’ll use your index finger 1st knuckle line to make sure your water is at the right level and that’s it! Heat the rice on low for about 20 minutes covered for the perfect fluffy rice.
Next up is our tomatoes and onions for toppings.
Traditionally, this side dish is made with fish sauce or shrimp paste, so to substitute that really quick, we’ll just drop in some Maggi sauce for some umami flavor.
By now, you should be able to check on the adobo and give it a quick stir. The flavors and aromas of soy sauce and vinegar should hit the air when you lift that lid. The potatoes should be almost at a fall-apart state, and the sauce should be just about ready! There’s just one last step to balance out the salt and acidity from the sauce, and that’s adding in 1 tbsp of coconut creamer. This will give the dish a little more richness while helping to mellow out the salt. Give a quick final stir and you’re ready to grub!
There’s some amazing things we can do with plant-based ingredients, like saving lives one meal at a time, and I hope you find this dish just as amazing I do.
| Cook Time | 45 minutes |
| Servings |
people
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- 1 small potato
- 1/4 cup soy sauce Datu Puti Brand
- 1/4 cup vinegar Datu Puti Brand
- 1 cup water
- 1 tsp peppercorn
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 tbsp toasted pine nuts
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 tbsp coconut creamer
- 1 tsp agave
- 2 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 tomato
- 1/4 small onion
- 1/2 lemon
- 1/4 tsp maggi sauce
- 1/8 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 20 oz.can jackfruit in brine
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 cup jasmine rice
- 1.5 cups water
Ingredients
Adobo Sauce
Tomato and Onion Topping
Jackfruit
Rice
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- Cut small potato into quarter sized pieces. In a main pot, heat 2 tbsp of coconut oil over low heat and add 3 peeled garlic to cook until fragrant. Add potatoes, soy, vinegar, bay leaves, peppercorn, agave, and water to the pot. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer with lid on for 15 minutes.
- Drain brine from can of jackfruit and thoroughly rinse under water, while using the lid of the can to strain water out. Repeat 3 times.
- In a large mixing bowl, shred jackfruit and coat with flour, garlic, onion powder, and salt. Let sit for a couple of minutes.
- Heat 1 tbsp of coconut oil in non stick pan over medium heat. Add jackfruit and sear until lightly crisped and browned, cooking for about 4 minutes. When done, add jackfruit into pot of adobo sauce and let simmer for another 10 minutes.
- Heat a dry pan over low heat, and toast 1 tbsp of pine nuts. When golden and slightly charred, remove from pan and finely chop. Add to adobo sauce for final 5 minute simmer along with 1 tbsp of coconut creamer.
- Dice 1/4 onion and 1 whole tomato. Mix in small bowl with lemon juice of 1/2 a lemon. Add 1/4 tsp of Maggi sauce, along with cracked pepper to taste. Set aside for topping.
- In a small pot, add in 1 cup of rice and rinse rice under cold water and strain. Add 1.5 cups of water or until water reaches 1st index finger knuckle line. Cover and let simmer on low heat for 15 minutes.
- Plate rice with tomato and onion topping. Adding jackfruit adobo to finish and enjoy.
I think Filipino cuisine is somewhat influenced by Spanish which makes it quite distinctive from other Asian cuisines, I never had any Filipino food because I became vegetarian when I was quite young and like you said it’s heavily based on pork etc so that recipe sounds great especially when it comes to using jackfruit.
Flavor was yummy like adobo! Thanks for the recipe! II would make it again however a little too salty for us so next time I would do half the amount of soy sauce and vinegar and add ginger.
Awesome! Glad you liked it! Great ideas with the ginger 😀
Made this dish and it was awesome! Dare I say better than the original. Thank you so much for writing this up. Only thing I did differently was add maple syrup instead of agave cos I forgot to get it at the grocer. Keep up the great work.
So awesome you found this recipe and I’m glad it came out well for you! Please feel free to take photos of your dish and tag me @goodlifecookin on Instagram!