Vegan Adobo with Tempe and Brown Rice

Today I’m going to share with you one of my favourite comfort foods –Vegan Adobo with Tempe and Brown Rice. It’s delicious, comforting, easy to make and a perfect one-pot meal. This recipe was actually inspired by Maz Valcorza from Everyday Vegan. I was shooting and directing a video recipe for the one of their online recipe courses and one of the recipes was a vegan adobo.

Her version uses brown rice and Bok choi and it was so yum! I was inspired to make my own version of adobo and so here it is. This vegan adobo uses tempe and brown rice as the main ingredients, as well as mushrooms and broccoli for flavour, nutrition and texture!

It’s like an asian version of risotto!

Vegan Adobo with Tempe and Brown Rice

If you’ve never heard of adobo before, it is a Phillipino/ Spanish dish that usually involves cooking meat, seafood, or vegetables in a vinegar- soy sauce marinate.

It is usually made with meat but I have found that tempe (or tempeh) and mushroom make the perfect meat replacement without sacrificing that delicious savoury flavour and texture that we all love from meat.

The key ingredients in this dish are garlic, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, bay leaves, and coconut sugar (you can use normal or brown sugar too). You can use tofu instead of tempe or even your favourite legumes. I use broccoli for this recipe but feel free to use other greens. I’ve made this dish so many times using different greens, beans, etc and they always turn out good. Just make sure you don’t overcook it as they can turn out gluggy (kinda like risotto).

Lately, I’ve been switching between dark mushroom soy sauce to light soy sauce depending on what I feel like. You can tell the difference in colours (left – dark soy sauce, right – light). For some reason the dark soy sauce product more ‘sticky’ glaze. Both are equally delicious though.

Check out the how to video below and then the recipe on the bottom of the page.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTrcpj3en0U[/embedyt]

Vegan Adobo with Tempe and Brown Rice

Vegan Adobo with Tempe and Brown Rice

A delicious twist on the ever-so-popular Philipino dish, Adobo. Made vegan using tempe as the main protein, brown rice, mushroom and broccoli florets. Yum!

  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil
  • 1 packet (250g of raw tempe, diced)
  • 5 garlic cloves (diced)
  • 1 red onion (diced)
  • 2 cups sliced mushrooms (oyster or brown mushrooms are my favourite to use)
  • 2 cups broccoli florets
  • 3 tbsp soy sauce (dark soy sauce will give you a darker colour than light soy sauce)
  • 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons coconut sugar
  • 4 bay leaves
  • 2 teaspoon whole peppercorns
  • 4 cups vegetable stock
  • 1 ½ cups brown rice
  1. Heat the coconut oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Cook pieces until golden brown on both sides, then remove. Stir in the red onion and garlic; cook until they soften and brown, about 6 minutes.

  2. Pour in soy sauce, bay leaf, peppercorn, vegetable stock, and vinegar. Add the tempe and rice, increase the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the rice is about 30-40 minutes.

  3. Stir in broccoli florets and mushrooms, cover for 5 minutes until broccoli and mushroom is cooked through

Vegan Adobo with Tempe and Brown Rice

I absoloutely love a one pot meal. Especially since I often don’t have time to cook an elaborate meal for dinner (strange coming from a food blogger I know). What’s your favourite one-pot meal? Share it with me in the comments below and I’ll try to make veganised one-pot deliciousness :) ✎ ♥

Did you make this recipe?

Please let me know how it turned out for you! Leave a comment below or share a picture on Instagram and tag me so I can see your creation.

Keren x

⋙ Original post published in December 2016. Updated with video in September 2017 ⋘ 

7 replies
  1. celine
    celine says:

    My vegan husband would be thrilled to munch it and I am sure would thank me for it. I plan to add some more veggies, hope it doesn’t changes the taste of the dish..

  2. Keren
    Keren says:

    Let me know how you go Celine! Don’t think adding more veggies will change the taste of the dish very much but it also depends what kind of veggies you’re planning to add. Things like carrots and broccoli should be fine.

  3. NN
    NN says:

    Hi Keren, can you update the broken links on this recipe? It’s one of the first that come up on google when you search “adobo tempeh” and I don’t want people to get dissuaded from the tasty looking recipe!

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *