Puerco Pibil

There are few dishes that are so amazingly good that you actually dream about them the night you first experience it.

Few dishes for which words fail you when you try to explain the rich and exquisite depth of flavor that greets you with every bite.  Few dishes that lead one to crave it so desperately that you’re willing to forego all logic in pursuit of one more delicious bite.  It is with no exaggeration that I say this is one such dish.

Remember I told you I believed the Boy was secretly plotting to get me to make this dish?  Well, I finally got around to making it…which didn’t take a lot of convincing considering it meant I got to look at Robert Rodriguez in another one of his cooking school segments:

Did I mention I think Robert Rodriguez is hot?  I did, huh?  Well, whatever…don’t judge me.  I take my eye candy where I can get it!  But eye candy (and nice tushes) aside, I was intrigued by a lot of things in this dish. First, instead of buying the achiote paste, Rodriguez strongly suggested making your own using whole spices:

That’s all well and good, but I didn’t have a spice grinder.  When I pointed this out to The Boy, he immediately went out and bought me a new one…showing just how badly this boy wanted me to make this dish.

The second thing that intrigued me was his insistence in using banana leaves to wrap up the pork while it cooked.  He admitted he didn’t know if the leaves imparted any flavor, but used it mostly because it “looked cool”.  Well, I’ll admit something here: I’ve cooked this dish three times before posting about it.  The first time I used the banana leaves and the dish was practically orgasmic.  The second time, I tried it without the banana leaves and while it was good, there was a slight difference in the taste.  It went from practically orgasmic to “yeah, that was good but I’ve had better”.  Then I made it this past weekend using a lovely pork butt shoulder from the Truck Patch.  This time, I used banana leaves (it helps that we now live fairly close to a Hispanic grocery store) and let’s just say I had an urge to smoke a cigarette after I ate it.

Recipe: Puerco Pibil

Ingredients

• 5 lb pork butt, cut into 2 inch cubes
• 5 tbsp annato seeds
• 2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
• 1/2 tsp whole cloves
• 8 whole allspice berries
• 2 habanero peppers, seeds removed and chopped
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp salt
• Juice of 5 lemons
• Shot of tequila (optional)
• Banana leaves (technically optional but use them – trust me on this!)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Using a spice or coffee grinder, grind the annato seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, cloves and allspice together. Grind until a fine dust of spices form.
3. In a blender, combine the orange juice, vinegar, garlic, salt and peppers. Blend until smooth and then add the ground spice mix. Blitz the combination again and then add the lemons and tequila. Give it one more blitz, forming the marinade.
4. Place the cubed pork in a large Ziploc bag and add the marinade. Shake the bag, coating all the pork. At this point, you can either let it marinade for 4-6 hours or go ahead and use it. I’ve done it both ways and can’t tell the difference.
5. Line a large, rectangular baking pan (about 8×13) with aluminum foil and then with the banana leaves. Pour in the pork and all the marinade and cover with the banana leaves. Wrap the pan with another sheet of aluminum foil tightly and bake for 4 hours. 

Meal type: dinner

Culinary tradition: Mexican

Tagged as: Food, Mexican Pork Recipe, Mexican Recipe, Mexican Recipes, Pork Recipe, Pork Recipes, Puerco Pibil, Recipe, recipes, Robert Rodriguez