Yucatecan · Main
Cochinita Pibil
- Advanced
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, real fire that builds and stays, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 1.8 kg boneless pork shoulder, cut into 6 cm chunks with the fat left on
- 130 g recado rojo
- 300 ml sour orange juice (naranja agria), or 150 ml orange with 75 ml grapefruit and 75 ml lime
- 22 g fine salt
- 6 garlic cloves, charred on a comal and peeled
- 5 g Mexican oregano, toasted and crumbled
- 60 g pork lard
- 2 large banana leaves, thick spine trimmed away
- 300 g pickled red onion, to serve
- 2 habaneros, to serve
The skills inside
Tortillas on the comalPie crust & blind bakingMarinating: acid, salt and timeSalting to draw the water out
The words inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Slake the recado rojo into the sour orange juice with the salt, garlic and oregano until it is a smooth loose paint with no gritty specks, turn the pork through it and refrigerate 6 to 12 hours. 600 min
- Pass each banana leaf over a flame or hot comal for a few seconds a side, until it flips from matte olive to glossy deep green and hangs limp; unwilted leaf cracks along its ribs and the parcel leaks.
- Line a deep dish with crossed leaves, pile in the pork with every drop of marinade and the lard, fold the leaves over into a sealed parcel, then cover the whole dish with foil and crimp it hard to the rim.
- Cook at 150 C (300 F) for 4 hours without opening it once. It is ready when a chunk collapses under sideways pressure from a spoon and the juices run clear orange under a finger of red fat. 240 min
- Shred coarsely in its own juices, never squeezed dry, and serve with pickled red onion and habanero.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tortillas on the comal 27 recipes
- It puffs. On the second turn the tortilla lifts into a dome as the trapped water flashes to steam and splits the two faces apart; a tortilla that never puffs was pressed too thick, cooked too cool, or turned too often.
- Freckled, not blackened: small brown spots across a pale field. An evenly browned tortilla has been on too long and will be a cracker by the time it reaches the table.
- It folds without cracking while warm, and still folds after five minutes under a cloth. A tortilla that splits along the fold has lost too much water on the comal.
- The edges are unbroken and roughly round, with no ragged fringe: a fringed edge means the masa was too dry when it was pressed, and no amount of heat will fix it afterwards.
- It smells of toasted corn rather than of scorch or of raw lime. Raw lime means the nixtamal was under-rinsed; scorch means the comal was above the working heat.
Where it goes wrong The masa was too dry or the comal too cool. A dry masa cracks at the edge on pressing and cannot generate the steam that puffs it; a cool comal dries the tortilla through before the water can flash, so it leaves the heat stiff, pale and already stale.
Pie crust & blind baking 29 recipes
- The shell goes into the oven cold and the oven is fully up to heat, so the structure sets before the fat has time to melt out of it.
- Lined and weighted right into the corners rather than heaped in the middle, so the sides are held against the tin as the fat softens.
- Docked where it is not meant to puff, and the base stays flat rather than lifting into a dome under its own steam.
- The weights come out and the base gets dry heat of its own before anything wet arrives. Pale and damp is not baked, and a filling will not finish it.
- The edges are set and coloured and the shell releases from the tin rather than gripping it.
Where it goes wrong It went in warm, or the weights only filled the middle. The sides slump down the tin before the pastry sets, so the case is shallower than it should be, the filling overflows it, and the base is still raw underneath: the soggy bottom, arrived at three ways at once.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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