Tacos al pastor

I love Tacos al pastor but have never made them myself. They are a popular street food here in SoCal and Mexico. With the “I Love Big Butts” Throwdown going on I finally decided to try my hand at making some. Forgive me as this is a long one.

I started out by thawing a Pork Butt I had in the freezer that I had purchased on sale for $.99 a lb. (7.93 lbs.)

I unwrapped it and found there was still some ice crystals on it. (which is what I was hoping for to make cutting it easier)

I cut it in half and deboned the other half.

I proceeded to cut it all up into approximately 3/8” slices.

I placed this into a large container, covered it and placed it into the fridge. I now gathered up the ingredients for the al pastor marinade.

Here’s the recipe I used. (It’s a combination of several recipes I watched on YouTube) Not shown in the picture are the pineapple juice and the vinegar.
8 lb bone-in pork shoulder (deboned)
4 tablespoons achiote paste (I used 1 – 3.5 oz. brick)
2 guajillo peppers (seeded and re-hydrated)
2 ancho peppers (seeded and re-hydrated)
3 Chipotle peppers + all the adobo sauce from 1 - 7 oz. can
5 garlic cloves
¼ small white or yellow onion
1 oz. Piloncillo (substitute brown sugar if you can find it)
1 tbsp. dried oregano (preferably Mexican)
1 tbsp. cumin
1 tbsp. salt
1 tbsp. pepper
1 tsp. cinnamon (preferably Mexican)
1 tsp, cloves
½ cup pineapple juice
½ cup white vinegar
¼ cup OO
¼ cup of the water from re-hydrating the peppers
¼ cup orange juice
¼ cup lime juice
1 pineapple, skinned and sliced into 1-inch (2 cm) rounds (for the spit/trompo)
(Note: I only had some small guajillo chiles so I used 6 of them)

Everybody went into the pool for a spin.

I poured some marinade into the bottom of a very large bowl and then some pork slices.

I repeated this process until all the pork was in the bowl and pour the rest of the marinade over the top. I then stirred it until everything had a nice coating.

Now how will I cook this? Tacos al pastor is a dish developed in central Mexico that is based on shawarma spit grilled meat brought by Lebanese immigrants. It is traditionally cooked on a vertical spit known as a trompo. I don't have such an exotic grill, so I had to improvise. I had found this indoor grill plate at a local thrift store for $2.17

and used it to create a vertical spit.

I now peeled and sliced up the pineapple

And started my vertical trompo stack [FONT=&quot]adding a slice of pineapple and red onion after every 6 or 7 layers of meat[/FONT].





I place the stack in the center of my weber redhead with coals all around it.

I then setup my craving station.

Here it is after approximately 30 minutes.

After approximately 75 minutes I removed the trompo and craved off the outer charred layer. (The char is an important part of the taste profile)

I then placed the trompo back in the redhead to char the outside again.

So pretty!

I then repeated the process another 3 times.



After I had trimmed off the outside 3 times I set up my taco cart errrr bar

and started to assemble my street taco plate.

Oh Yum!

Here it is served up with a Modelo Especial.



This was a little on the spicy side but oh so delicious!

Thanks for looking.

Joshw said:

:clap: Well done! I would so hurt myself on that.

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Thank you Josh but I don't want anyone to hurt themselves. Getting uncomfortably full is perfectly fine.

bigpernz said:

Awesome cook I'd kill 10 of those

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Thank you bigpernz

LordRiffenstein said:

Amazing cook and great pictures!

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Thank you LR.