Adobo Pork Recipe

Our quick Pork Adobo recipe comes out tender and delicious in a pressure cooker. You can use picnic pork roast, a boneless shoulder or loin cut up into chunks with our homemade sauce for dinner this week.

What is Adobo Pork?

This is a Filipino dish made by braising, slow cooking or pressure cooking pork in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, bay leaves, and peppercorns until tender. It’s known for its bold, savory, and tangy flavor, and is considered one of the national dishes of the Philippines. It is often marinated first, then cooked and served with rice.

As an easy Ninja Foodi recipe you would work the lid that is not attached to make this. Any brand will work the same my friends, just with a different name on it. Okay the latter does have an added air fry function but you won’t need that in this case.

There are many ways to serve this. If you have eaten this over the years I am sure you already have your “must haves” as far as sides go, or maybe it’s always eaten as is. Either with rice or just in a bowl you’ll love this.

Ingredient Notes

1. Chunks of fresh or defrosted pork roast is what I use. You do want a cut that has some fat in it so it is nice and tender. With that said tenderloin is not a great choice, rather Boston Butt would be a better choice.
2. Onions diced or sliced adds texture and flavor to your dish, use yellow or white varieties for this.
3. Soy sauce will bring a deep umami flavor to it that is the salty nature of the sauce. You can use aminos for a gluten free substitute.
4. The tang that you taste in this dish is from some rice vinegar
5. Minced garlic is great, from fresh cloves or most of the time I will use bottled
6. Peppercorns or ground pepper works if that is all you have
7. Bay leaves are optional but give it a traditional flavor you would expect to taste
8. Beef broth, stock or any variety of liquid works but for the correct flavor profile this is what we use

What cut of pork do you use?

The most common would be to use something like in our Instant Pot pork shoulder or some like Instant Pot pork belly for this. If you follow the directions below you would need to really use any (not belly) variety and cube into large bite sized pieces.

Can you use frozen pork?

I would not use frozen pork butt in Instant Pot as explained here, no you couldn’t. If rock hard and not cut into bite size pieces initially it would take much longer. You could follow temperature and timing in the link above, shred and then just use the seasonings and sauce suggested here for the same flavors though.

Tips

Make sure that all the chunks are the same size so they cook at the same rate. Brown both at the beginning on sautés just enough for the outsides to no longer be pink. You do NOT need to cook the meat all the way through, that will happen during the high pressure cook stage. This is what you’re going to need to get going on this one:

There are two styles out there with different sauces. This is more of a Filipino version vs. one you’d eat at a Mexican restaurant. If you want to try both then give this a whirl first. Then you could try it again using 3-4 Tbsp of this Mexican adobo seasoning blend and omit the soy sauce in the recipe card below. This will create a whole different flavor so you can see which one you prefer.

If you are new to pressure cooking meat you may be worried because on the IP site it warns to not cook without 1 cup of water. Well you have to remember that all liquids = water in regards to what they are saying. I have had many questions regarding this so I wanted to address it here.

Many times with proteins I don’t even use a whole cup. This still works with just 1/2 c. because when it cooks there is liquid released as well. You can see above where it looks like a lot more than just one cup of liquid, well it is. You could even decrease the broth to 1/4 of a cup and it would be totally okay so it is less “soupy”.

Why do you need to deglaze a pressure cooker after sauteing meat?

Remember every time you sauté meat that you deglaze pot after you are done, and cancel the saute function so it can cool for a minute too. This is important so the burn notice doesn’t appear on your screen, that is no fun. I like to use a wooden spatula so I don’t scratch the pot.

What is Adobo Served With?

Typically you’d see this with Ninja foodi rice, a side of mashed potatoes or maybe some quinoa. Some like to add more liquid to make more of a soup and serve it like that with nothing else for more of a low carb meal.

Instant Pot Pork is best when pieces are bite sized. Like our pork stew it allows the protein to get really tender vs. when you leave it in a large chunk. I do this with other meats as well for the same reason. Smaller means less time and they come out more moist in the end.