Review of Tacos Al Pastor

This is a recipe I’ll make over and over again. It’s about 99.9% exactly like what we get at the restaurant.

This is how it looked when it came out of the oven.

This is how it looked after I sliced off what we ate for dinner. You can see that the recipe makes a TON! The recipe calls for a 5 pound boneless pork shoulder. I saw a pretty pork roast that was 2.5 pounds for less than $7 so I got that. I made the full recipe for marinade and used a bit more than half of it.

The meat was tender and tasty.

The only thing I would do differently next time and when I reheat the leftovers is get a bit of butter sizzling in a skillet, toss the sliced meat in there to sear it just a little, then I’ll stir in a tiny bit of the marinade I saved before adding it to the meat.

When Vince first started talking about making this, I was concerned because he always overdoes the spices and herbs. If he heats up something and uses garlc, the entire house, including my clothes in the closet at the far end of the house . . everything smells like garlic.

He said this didn’t have enough cinnamon. I could taste the cinnamon just fine and I didn’t want an overpowering cinnamon taste. Vince has only gotten the al pastor meat once and that was in a burrto. I’ve had the al pastor tacos four times . . every time we’ve gone there except one. The one time Vince got it, I felt like the sauce was too thick and the cinnamon was overpowering. I think by heating the meat in a skillet, maybe taking out what I’m going to eat and then adding a bit of marinade to his, that will solve the problem . . that really isn’t a problem.

One more thing — in my opinion, this is the perfect . . 100% perfect thing to cook for guests or for a bunch of people. I did all the work yesterday making the marinade, slicing the meat, adding the marinade to the meat. This morning I peeled the pineapple and sliced it, put the meat and pineapple on the skewers, stuck it all in the fridge til about an hour before I was ready to cook it. I made refried beans and Spanish rice, which could also be made ahead and re-heated. Perfect food for entertaining and besides, it’s unique, it’s pretty and not spicy at all . . except for the jalapenos and you don’t have to eat those. You don’t even have to use them. The recipe didn’t call for those. I added them because I wanted them.

The recipe lists several ways to cook this. I used the oven. I cooked it for about 2 hours at 250 degrees, bumped it up to 300 for another hour, then put it on convection at 300 for about 30 minutes. We were waiting on a friend to come by and didn’t want to be eating when he arrived so once it was at the point where I would have served it, I put the oven down to 170, which I think is the lowest the big oven will go, and left it for about 45 minutes til we were ready to eat and everything was just perfect.