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Hi! I am back with a recipe for vegan Filipino adobo without soy sauce called Adobong Puti. This Adobong Puti dish is rich with garlic and gingery flavors, easy to make and only requires nine ingredients. It’s called “Adobong Puti” which translates to “white adobo”. While my first vegan Filipino Adobo recipe requires soy sauce, this recipe doesn’t.

As we already know, Filipino adobo is both an indigenous dish and an indigenous cooking method. The salt, instead of soy sauce, was the original way to make adobo. The soy sauce was added later on when Chinese traders came to the Philippines influenced the dish. The soy sauce version is called “Adobong Itim” which translates to “black adobo”.

This adobong puti recipe was adapted from my aunt’s own adobong puti recipe and her adobo was my favorite growing up.

This simple adobong puti recipe does have complex flavors. I had to make this dish five or six times to get the ratios right and I pretty much had to abandon my aunt’s directions because they were too meat-centered. I felt kind of bad about that but using soy curls instead of meat just changes everything. The rules are just so different and I can’t afford to follow the “don’t use too much oil” instruction when soy curls don’t render any fat at all.

In this vegan Filipino adobo without soy sauce recipe for adobong puti, I use a whole head of garlic just like in my other recipe but even more ginger (peeling optional) and vinegar in this final version. I use about two tablespoons of salt during the cooking process and when serving, I salt my white rice to taste. This is another dish where it’s important to salt to taste.

In my vegan Filipino adobo for adobong itim recipe, I had to be careful to not break up the tofu too much and there wasn’t any real browning that wasn’t soy-sauce induced. In this dish, I get to be more free about stirring, folding and tossing the soy curls since they’re way more sturdy.

Because this is a more simple vegan Filipino adobe recipe, I’m not providing a step-by-step with pictures in this narrative. But this is basically it: The aromatics are cooked in the oil for a minute or two. Then we incorporate the soy curls and then we pretty much cook everything at a rolling boil for 20-25 minutes until the liquid is mostly cooked down and the soy curls are browned – not burned.

Because this is a pretty vinegary dish, I’d just watch out for fumes while cooking. The finished dish is perfect and quite vinegary but everyone who has tried this dish unanimously enjoys it. This includes non-Filipinos who aren’t used to eating this kind of stuff. And by this stuff, I mean pretty vinegary, obviously gingery, super garlicky soy curls with whole peppercorns to boot.

So I hope you like this dish too! If you use my recipe, please try to follow it to a tee and let me know what you think!

Filipino Adobo Without Soy Sauce – Adobong Puti Recipe

Print Recipe

This is an easy vegan Filipino recipe for the original method of making adobo using salt instead of soy sauce.

Author: Jan Carlisle @ Bakeroise

Ingredients

Scale

16 oz of dehydrated soy curls
2 cups of oil
2 tablespoons of salt, divided
3” chunk ginger, unpeeled, rinsed and roughly chopped – about 33 grams
1 whole head of garlic, each clove peeled and roughly chopped
¼ cup of peppercorn
3 dried bay leaves
3 cups of white distilled vinegar
3 cups of water
Salt to taste

Instructions

Bring a large pot of the oil to medium-high heat.
When oil is hot, add ginger, garlic, dried bay leaves, peppercorns and sprinkle with one tablespoon of salt. Stir to mix evenly and cook for about 1-2 minutes. Make sure not to brown.
Add the soy curls and stir so that the oil and aromatics cover each soy curl as much as possible.
Add the remaining tablespoon of salt, water and vinegar. Stir to mix and then bring to a boil and cook on for 20-25 minutes at a rolling boil until about 90% of the liquid is cooked down.
The next 5 minutes is mostly stirring to avoid sticking while still browning. Fold in the soy curls so that everything is evenly brown. Stir until most of the soy curls are still full, moist but evenly brown. Do not burn.