Google Doodle celebrates the taste and aroma of Filipino adobo

Kyle Bradshaw | Mar 14 2023 - 12:16 pm PT

Today’s Google Doodle is in celebration of adobo, which is both a style of cooking and a mainstay dish of Filipino cuisine.

When you hear the word “adobo,” you’ll likely think of one of two types of cuisine. There’s Spanish adobo, which is a technique for preserving meat by soaking it in a marinade, and Filipino adobo, a similar style of cooking that also makes use of vinegar. Despite the similarities and the common name, the Spanish and Filipino styles of adobo were developed independently, with Spaniards in the Philippines giving the latter its name.

Like any form of cooking, there are many different ways to make Filipino adobo, but each one starts with vinegar, often made from coconuts, kaong palm, or nipa palm. Adding to that foundation, adobo frequently features garlic, bay leaf, soy sauce, and black pepper.

That said, some variations will skip some of these ingredients, like adobong puti, which excludes soy sauce. From there, the flavors of adobo will often vary depending on what ingredients are readily available in a region, adding sweet, salty, or sour profiles.

The resulting Filipino adobo broth is used in the process of marinating and slow-cooking the main ingredients, whether meat, seafood, or vegetables. Traditionally, this was done in clay pots, but now it’s common to see adobo cooked in a wok.

Once fully cooked, the adobo is typically served over a bed of rice, as expertly demonstrated in today’s Google Doodle. The Doodle shows two children leaning in to take a big sniff of a massive plate of Filipino adobo. Along the bottom edge, “Google” is spelled out across eating utensils and common adobo ingredients.

As for why Google chose today to celebrate the storied bit of Filipino cuisine, on March 15, 2007, the word “adobo” made its first published appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Image: Google