In its base form, meat, seafood, or vegetables are first browned in oil, and then marinated and simmered in vinegar, salt and/or soy sauce, and garlic.

The various precolonial peoples of the Philippine archipelago often cooked or prepared their food with vinegar and salt in various techniques to preserve them in the tropical climate.

[7] When the Spanish Empire colonized the Philippines in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, they encountered the adobo cooking process.

[13] In the 1711 Visayan dictionary Vocabulario de la lengua Bisaya, the term guinamus (verb form: gamus) was used to refer to any kind of marinades (adobo), from fish to pork.

[18] Unlike the Spanish and Latin American adobo, the main ingredients of Philippine adobo are ingredients native to Southeast Asia, which include vinegar (made from palm sap or sugarcane), soy sauce (typically substituting salt), black peppercorns, and bay leaves (traditionally Cinnamomum spp.

[18] Typically, pork or chicken, or a combination of both, is slowly cooked in vinegar, crushed garlic, bay leaves, black peppercorns, and soy sauce.

The proportion of ingredients like soy sauce, bay leaves, garlic, or black pepper can vary.

[22][28] Adobo has been called the quintessential Philippine stew, served with rice both at daily meals and at feasts.

[18] Seafood variants include fish (isdâ), catfish (hitò), shrimp (hipon), and squid or cuttlefish (pusít).

In Batangas and Laguna, turmeric is added, giving the dish a distinct, yellowish color (known as adobong diláw, "yellow adobo"), as well as a red variant using achuete seeds in the former.

[10][22][8] In the northernmost province of Batanes, the Ivatan prepare a type of adobo called luñiz, where they preserve pork in jars with salt.

A number of local Philippine snack products such as cornicks, nuts, chips, noodle soups, and corn crackers, market their items as "adobo flavored".

[39][40] The announcement has received some criticism from the public, but the DTI-BPS clarified that it's not mandatory and will only aim to define a basic traditional recipe that can serve as a benchmark for determining the authenticity of Filipino dishes in the international setting.