Code Up BBQ

Tacos Al Pastor

—

by

joseph
in

Ingredients:

Sauce, marinade:

  • 1 10oz can Chipotle in Adobo
  • 2 dried Guajillo pepper
  • 1/2 cup pineapple juice (juice from one can crushed pineapple, you’ll need pineapple later)
  • 2 tsp vegetable oil
  • 1 tsp Mexican oregano
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp sugar

Topping:

  • Chopped pineapple (from can of crushed pineapple)
  • Chopped onion
  • Cilantro
  • Salsa Verde
  • Lime juice

Sauce Prep:

  • Mix it all together and simmer. Don’t reduce.
  • Strain, keep chunks for marinade.
  • Marinade 3-4lb pork shoulder over night with chunks and 1/4 of sauce.
  • Save the remaining 3/4 to add to the meat later.

Cook: (~10 hours)

  • Remove pork shoulder from marinade chunks, save the chunks for flavor in the smoker.
  • Sear pork shoulder on flat top (bonus if you have one inside a grill), all sides, about 1 hour total. 
  • Smoke pork unwrapped for 2 hours @225°
  • Wrap the pork along with the marinade chunks you saved, smoke a further 6 hours.
  • Sit for 30 minutes.
  • Empty the drippings, we won’t use this because it’s too greasy.
  • Shred.
  • Mix in all sauce/marinade and simmer until sauce has absorbed/reduced almost fully into the meat, about 1 hour.

Cooking:

OK, the quick recipe is out of the way. here’s the long version.

First the pork shoulder. Typically my wife picks up a 7 lb pork shoulder and this recipe calls for a 3-4 lb shoulder… what’s the disconnect? I cook the whole thing and then right after I shred the pork but before I mix it with the rest of the sauce I separate out about half of it and make BBQ pulled pork with that half and tacos with the first half.

If you want to make the full 7lb of tacos, you’ll just have to double up on the amount of sauce you make.

To make the sauce it really is as simple as mixing everything into a sauce pan and simmer for half an hour or so. Then I strain out all the chunks of peppers, etc and put that along with the pork into a zip top bag overnight.

First thing in the morning I get my grill going and I have a cast iron flat top that fits in my grill. This is what I use to sear all the sides of the pork. There’s not secret here, you can sear yours in whatever manner you like. I prefer this because it’s kind of the best of both worlds. Also I use a gas grill and an electric smoker because… well, because I’m the sous chef on my team and I don’t have the big smoker, nor do I have the experience with using the big smoker on my own. That being said, I cook specific recipes that work with the tools that I own. This is one of them.

Once the sear is finished you can follow a modified version of the 3-2-1 method. That method is where you smoke unwrapped for 3 hours, wrapped for 2 hours, then again unwrapped (and sauced) for 1 hour.

This time we will smoke unwrapped for 2 hours, then wrap things up with the marinade chunks for 6 hours, then shred and cook in a pan with the sauce for the last 1 hour.

All this cooking lasts approximately 10 hours so you can plan your start time based on that.

Topping:

Primarily this is just the pineapple, onion, and cilantro in fairly equal portions. If you don’t like cilantro, or if you just don’t like a lot o fit you can absolutely use mostly a chopped lettuce (romaine or mixed greens) and then use a lesser amount of cilantro or none at all if that’s your thing. Put a green salsa and squeeze of lime on the taco itself not mixed into the pineapple and onion.

Making the taco itself:

First you need a taco shell. I prefer the smaller corn tortillas, but it’s really the size that matters. If you make the tortillas smaller you can eat more tacos and they just fit in your hand better this way.

Put the tortilla itself directly on the burner of the oven. If you don’t have a gas oven/range then the next best thing is a cast iron griddle top. You may even prefer this method entirely.

Put however much pork into the taco that you want, but remember you will need a healthy serving of the topping so leave room. Then put the pineapple/onion/cilantro mixture on top as well as a healthy amount of salsa verde (green sauce) and a light squeeze of lime.

Enjoy.