Tacos al Pastor

Can anyone share a Taco al Pastor marinade recipe?

Kenji's (Serious Eats) looks very good. Was underwhelmed with Rick Bayless one. I've never cooked this dish before so I'm open to any comments or suggestions. I'm going to use my horizontal Runco rotisserie. Was thinking of making a meat log with transglutaminase to hold i together. I can do the pineapple that way too.

Seems onion/pineapple/lime/cilantro condiments are traditional. What do others put on? Was thinking about making a mexican cream lime sauce. Serve it table side on a squirt bottle.

2 whole ancho chilies, seeds and stems removed
2 whole pasilla or guajillo chilies, seeds and stems removed
1/2 cup homemade or store-bought low-sodium chicken stock
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
1 teaspoon dried ground cumin seed
1 tablespoon achiote powder or paste
1 chipotle chili packed in adobo sauce, plus 2 teaspoons sauce from can
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
3 whole cloves garlic
2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons sugar

al pastor?

Yea, spell check ugh

Jesus that title ...

Mucho Bocho said:

Yea, spell check ugh

Click to expand...

I thought it was intentional, as a joke....certainly made me chuckle, once the wincing stopped.

Pretty sure I had tacos al pasture once at a food truck just outside Nogales. :eeew:

So I thinly sliced up 3 LBS pork money muscle then made the aforementioned marinade. The I lined terrine pans with aged hog jowl and layered the sliced pork like a terrine. Sealed and sous vide @140 for 6 hours then chill completely. To serve just slice them pan fry, I'm going to skip the rotisserie.

Just did Kenji's over the weekend but tweaked the rub a bit with more chiles (2X everything including the Chipotle!) and added Cascabel & Molido to go along with the others. Very, very nice albeit the bacon should have been thinner that I used. Let me know how the sous vide works out - had considered that but figured the first time out would just follow his temp/technique ... crema is an excellent idea and could make it with quacamole as well ... Cast iron / hot worked the best for me FWIW ... Also used some fresh OJ (1/2 C) & Lime Juice (1/4 C) ...

Kenji's recipe is excellent, though I too add more chilis. His terrine and pan-fry technique works great for making shawarma, too.

Hey Mucho - How did the sous vide work out for you? I was concerned about the amount of fat that may not have broken down during the sous vide until you attempted to finish on 'a la plancha' or other surface ... hope it worked out (remember though pic's or it never happened but I guess the same applies to my version as well).

I had trouble with the Kenji recipe the only time I tried it, I felt because there was so much moisture around that the pork, cooking in the terrine dish, was effectively braised. I'm wondering why I'm the only person that seems to have suffered with that, perhaps I did something dumb. But I'm definitely interested in the sous-vide result, for clues about temperature or time, i.e. how to stop the pork turning into stew given that it doesn't have the opportunity to drain.

I love the idea of doing this rotisserie, particularly if you access to a vertical. Unfortunately, kind of like rodizio, it never worked out ideally at home for me, as much as I wanted it to. I think the method you're on to is the way to go for getting everybody fed at once Dennis. Curious about your ratio of salt to meat. Were you happy?

Wanted to get back to everyone with my results. They were mixed. Mike the seasoning was fine (you know us home cooks never measure anyway). What wasn't good was that it didn't need any bacon or in my case aged Jowl.

So I lined a few small terrine pans with shrink, then a layer of jowl then the thin sliced marinated pork. Sealed and SV 140 for 4HRS. Chilled completely and then sliced against the grain into ribbons about 1/4 in thick. I cooked them on a planca I had made for my Kamadogrill. The pieces came off crispy with a good firm texture.

I'd take the same approach except leave out the bacon, just made the pork too fatty. The flavor profile was good though.