“Tacos al Past-o-roti” – Mexican kebabs !

Tacos al Pastor. A classic South of the Border mix of pork, pineapple and so many different chillis from Mexico and something that needed to be tried for sure. First port of call was Google, and these two sites/posts provided my guiding light for this cook…

https://www.kamadoguru.com/topic/33898-big-joetisserie-tacos-al-pastor/

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/05/tacos-al-pastor-recipe.html

Not really much deviation for me from those two sources. I was really looking to try something new for myself rather than create a new concept. I guess the main lesson that I discovered in the end was that the “al Pastor” sauce/marinade (which is made here from scratch) comes in a jar and can be bought in the supermarket. It is, of course, fun to construct this from scratch.

No need for me to repeat the recipe here – follow the Serious Eats link for the ingredients for the marinade. I can honestly say this was the first time I’d cooked with these ingredients.

As with the Kamado Guru site, I went with pork shoulder and sliced it as finely as I could before applying to the marinade. The Serious Eats post talked about pork loin/sirloin – that might have been a little more tender I suppose. The typically tougher shoulder was going in for a close cut and marinade though, so I concurred with the Kamado guy that it would do.
The other bit of fun here was the shaping of the meat stack. Kamado guy used yoghurt tubs…I got hold of the cheapest bottle of pop (soda !) from the supermarket and went with that.

The bottle, emptied of chemical fizzy water, was quickly re-filled with my home made blend of sliced pork, the Mexican chilli based marinade, bacon, and of course sliced pineapple – the Kamado site guy made that sound fantastic ! There was too much, as usual, so I thought I’d try the Serious Eats loaf tin cook method at the same time.

Ideally that should have chilled overnight in the fridge but this was another episode of impatience/bad planning, and so it got an hour before being taken out and “spiked”. The end result was a pretty decent looking horizontal stack of meat which was pinned into place with a few satellite skewers. The ends are squashed together with this invaluable and cheap tool…

 Weapon of choice was Kamado Joe Classic Joetisserie (with the Napoleon Shish Kebab wheel, above) set up over the regular stainless steel grills to accommodate the drip tray and loaf tin. KJ was at 300F and we were looking for an Internal Temperature of 175F. The MEATER wireless probes are the go-to for a rotisserie cook – these bits of equipment are just so reliable and convenient. You can see them sticking out in the picture below.

I’d say that took about two hours to cook but the key is the temperature not the time here. The loaf tin looks a little charred but that’s the bacon. The rest of it was absolutely delicious. Carved with the big IO Shen Scimitar and served, complete with pineapple, with a fruity salsa, guac and sour cream in wheat tacos of course.