Receta para al pastor

Carne al Pastor Casera

How do I slice it so thin? Normally, al pastor is made with boneless pork shoulder sliced super, super thin. Pork shoulders are used extensively throughout the pig's life, rendering them extremely porky and full of fat and connective tissue that breaks down into rich, unctuous gelatin as it slow-roasts.

The number of times I've told Erin , "Sure, go ahead and put it on the schedule for next week," only to swap it out at the last minute because I wasn't happy with the results is a number higher than I care to count. How about the marinade? As each outer layer of meat crisps up, the taquera shaves it off with a sharp knife, catching it in a soft corn tortilla before topping it with a bit of the roasted pineapple, salsa, cilantro, and onions.

It's really glorious stuff. Is there some other viable option that would work? The results are almost bacon-like in their succulence. If there's a reason it resembles shawarma or doner kebab, it's because the concept was first introduced to Mexico by Lebanese immigrants. Cut from the pig's back towards the hind legs the hams , sirloin is far easier to work with it's easy to find a boneless sirloin roast , is relatively easy to slice, and is more tender than shoulder.

Tacos al Pastor Recipe - Bon Appétit

It doesn't really get much smokiness, per se—the fire is usually a simple gas fire—but it does get a little bit of singed char. I have been working on this recipe for longer than any other recipe I've ever worked on. Then there's the issue of actually cooking the stuff. Is there an ideal time to marinate for? There, in true al pastor form, the taqueras marinate thin, thin slices of pork shoulder in a mixture of chilies and aromatics colored bright red with achiote.

Juicy and crisp with a deep chili flavor tempered by sweet roasted pineapple. So what advantages does it offer? Can we replicate a vertical rotisserie? Unless you have years of experience butchering, cleaning it up without mangling it is not an easy task. The slices are then stacked onto a vertical skewer, forming a large, bell-shaped trompo spinning top , which gets topped with an onion and pineapple, and slowly rotates in front of a vertical grill.

The problems with such an endeavor are immediately obvious. What's the best meat to use? For one thing, it's packed with flavor. Particularly impressive were the tacos al pastor from Taqueria Los Guachos. But for the pork to be tender, it must be sliced thin and must be slow cooked. If you are lucky enough to live near a Mexican meat market, you can probably find it right at the meat counter. The question is: Can we replicate this at home?

I started off by addressing the meat. With meat, the more an animal uses a particular set of muscles, the more flavor they'll acquire. The rest of us need to do a bit more work. Those in the know will ask for theirs to be cooked up extra-crisp on the plancha after it's been sliced. It all started when the good folks at Columbus Food Adventures took me on a whirlwind taco tour of Columbus, Ohio, which, believe it or not, has some of the finest taco trucks in the country.

Tacos al pastor: Receta fácil y deliciosa con dos salsas para acompañar!

But at long last, I'm pretty darn pleased with the results. As the trompo spins, it slowly cooks, the fat from the pork shoulder dripping out and across the surface of the meat, basting it as it crisps. This kind of slicing is not easy to do with the equipment you've got at home, which brings us to Pork sirloin.

This is a pork shoulder:. I decided to test pork shoulder along with a couple of easy-to-find alternatives. It's a large, unwieldy hunk of meat with a couple of strangely shaped bones in the middle and a whole lot of rind. First off, there are the basics.