Tacos al Pastor

mora1

I'm having some people over in a couple days for dinner and I'm going to be making tacos. I really wanted to try to do al Pastor, but I don't have any previous experience or a good recipe for them. Does anyone who has made them before have a good recipe or know a website that has some good information regarding it? I'll be making these at home, so I won't have access to a rotating spit, so any recipe would have to have an oven/stove alternative. Thanks.

Lanthis

This sounds difficult to do without a spit (especially vertical). Basically you'd be making a meat-marinade tower and having all of the fat drip off. There are plenty of recipes available to you on the internet, as far as implementing this in your own oven, I'd suggest the following approximation:

:!!:Thinly slice meat against the grain(through, not with, the fibers of the muscle).

:!!:Prepare chili/spice paste as per usual, however, you may want to make it even THICKER than the recipe suggests. Here is a recipe:
http://www.batista.org/pastor.html
The pineapple juice is extremely important, because pineapple has an enzyme that breaks down animal protein, which will make the pork incredibly tender (trust me, I tried to eat a whole fresh pineapple once and it made my mouth bleed!). I would omit the pineapple fruit and boil down the juice with the vinegar to concentrate it.

:!!:Begin stacking the sliced meat, alternating between a thin coat of paste and meat. It should look like you're stacking thick lunch meat and ketchup.

:!!:Stack as high as possible. This will obviously depend on the size of the meat. When you get to about a foot, take 2 or 3 metal skewers, run them through the meat in 3 points near the edge of the meat, kind of like you're end marking a peace sign. Turn the meat on its side and run 1 more through the middle on the other side. Put on a baking sheet and cover with saran wrap for about 6 hours and refrigerate.

:!!:Bake in the oven at 300 until core temp is 190 (I think that is the safe temp for pork? You may want to check). Rotate every 30 minutes. If you have one of those turkey pans with the V shaped rack, you can probably use that for even better results, depending on how sturdy this meat log you've created is.

:!!:ENJOY?

Lanthis

Also, you can probably baste with more while you turn, if you like.

If you're doing it interactively, for a hungry crowd, pull it out quickly from the oven, slice off the sides in small pieces, give them to the guests, close oven.

mora1

Cool, thanks. Any help is appreciated. When I went to look up recipes on the net there was such a wide variety of ways people do it, it was hard to decide which way I should go about it. I have a couple days before the meal night. I think I'll check out my store and see what ingredients I can come up with before I settle on any specific recipe. I'd definitely like to let the meat marinate for a day or two before it's cooked.