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.

Are you in love with this dish when you visit your favorite restaurant, you’ve gotta’ try our recipe. It is easy to create with your favorite seasonings, this dinner cooks fast and comes out fork tender every time. Just one of our favorite ethnic Instant Pot recipes on our site. (affiliate links present)
Table of Contents
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.
If you are new to pressure cooking we have a lot of easy one pot meal recipes for you here. To begin with let’s start with a few basic tips:
- Make sure to Bookmark our InstaPot recipes page. We add new ones each week!
- Then PRINT this —–> Instant Pot cooking times cheat sheet that will help you understand how long meat, vegetables and beans take to cook in your pressure cooker.
- I HIGHLY recommend you buy this non stick pot.
- You should know how to deglaze a pressure cooker after sautéing but it won’t have as many issues with this better liner.
For reference, this is the model I have (a 6 quart) and use for all recipe creations.
Ingredient Notes
- 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.
- Onions diced or sliced adds texture and flavor to your dish, use yellow or white varieties for this.
- 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.
- The tang that you taste in this dish is from some rice vinegar
- Minced garlic is great, from fresh cloves or most of the time I will use bottled
- Peppercorns or ground pepper works if that is all you have
- Bay leaves are optional but give it a traditional flavor you would expect to taste
- 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”.
Adobo Pork
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3 lbs pork, cut into bite size chunks
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, sliced
- 3 tbsp minced garlic
- 1/2 tsp peppercorns
- 3 bay leaves
- 1/4 c rice vinegar
- 1/4 c soy sauce
- 1/2 c broth, or water
Instructions
- Set pot to saute and add olive until hot. Add cubed meat and cook on all sides so they are no longer pink but not cooked thru. Then turn pot off.
- Add all other ingredients. Close lid and steam valve. Set to meat/stew function for 15 minutes.
- When done allow pressure to release naturally, this will take 15-20 min. Serve
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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.
Can you make this with chicken?
If you wanted to make this with chicken you could use this pork adobo Instant Pot recipe using this meat but decrease cook time to less than 15 minutes, maybe 8. Since a natural release is used at the end that will continue to cook it too. Poultry doesn’t take as long because it isn’t as tough. The same timing would be fine but meat would fall apart.
Both really. They both have distinctly different flavors for sure so make what you like and just refer to the timing we share here. Also make sure if you’re making in a pressure cooker you add 1 c. of liquid of some kind to reach pressure and start cooking.