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When I told my friends and family that I had decided to adopt a plant-based diet in an effort to live more sustainably, they didn’t hesitate to share their concerns: “What about our weekly visits to 50-cent wing night?” and “No more cheese? That’s just not you.” And while I did love meat and cheese, I knew saying goodbye to my favorite bacon double cheeseburger wasn’t even close to being the hardest part of the transition. For me, the most difficult part was accepting that I’d no longer be able to stuff my face with my mom’s bistek tagalog, pork afritada, and chicken adobo.
I grew up in a Filipino household where my mom kept us fed with heavily meat-focused dishes, always served with a mountain of steamed white rice. I can’t remember a time that she ever made a vegetarian dinner, so it was my understanding that Pinoys loved their meat and made sure to include it in most meals. A vegan Filipino? I didn’t know any.
Sometimes I could get my plant-based Pinoy fix by replicating my mom’s staples—like pancit and lumpia—by leaving out the meat and adding a little more veg. But those popular dishes that are based on saucy, braised, bone-in beef, chicken, and pork? I’d have to skip them. I couldn’t even imagine what a vegetarian version of adobo would be like.
Adobo, often considered the national dish of the Philippines, is typically made with meat simmered in an aromatic soy sauce- and vinegar-based marinade. It’s salty, sour, and a tiny bit sweet, embodying the flavors I associate with my mom’s cooking and Filipino cuisine in general. To this day, it’s still a struggle for me to walk through my mom’s house when there’s a pot of adobo on the stove and resist the urge to spoon some onto my plate.
So, when I learned about Chef Raj Abat’s mushroom adobo, I knew I had to make it ASAP. Mushroom adobo is one of the dishes Abat served at Saramsam, a short-lived vegan Filipino restaurant he opened in Manhattan with restaurateur Ravi DeRossi in 2020.
“There are hundreds of different kinds of adobo—and everyone will tell you that theirs is authentic, or that theirs is the best,” Abat tells me over the phone. But regardless if it’s made with mushrooms or with meat—like the kind Abat ate growing up in the Philippines—adobo is all about the flavors in the sauce, he says. “This is the only version of adobo I know.”
And as for what he loves most about this mushroom-based rendition: “It tastes just like my grandma’s.” Enough said.
For adobo to be considered true adobo, Abat explains, it needs to include a few key elements: vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaf, garlic, and black peppercorn. “This is a very classic version of adobo that uses the same ingredients and the same technique my grandma used,” he says. “You’ll taste the sour flavors from the vinegar, the saltiness from the tamari, and the very prominent flavors of the bay leaves and black pepper—it's tangy, it’s sticky, it’s delicious.”
In addition to those five essential ingredients, Abat’s adobo also includes mushroom bouillon, which packs an umami punch that he says vegan dishes often lack. “When you sear meat, you naturally get a lot of umami in the process, and that can be hard to do when you’re using just vegetables.” The concentrated mushroom powder gives the meaty sautéed mushrooms an extra boost and added depth of flavor—and it’s the perfect addition to the thick, garlicky sauce.
“You can make anything adobo—chicken, fish, shrimp, squid, mushrooms. Really, anything,” Abat says. And after making the dish for the first time, I asked myself, how did I never think of this before? I went nearly a decade without eating adobo, but I never stopped missing it—and with this recipe, I don’t have to.
