Five Degrees Off Normal

Well after yesterday’s downer, here’s something that’s a little more upbeat
And delicious.

Shout out to you Nutty. You inspired it!  Made me think of good food!

Puerco Pibil:

For the dry part of the marinade:
5 tablespoons Anato/Acheote Seeds
2 teaspoons of cumin seed
Tablespoon of Black Pepper corns
8 all spice seeds
½ teaspoon of cloves
(You can find all this at Shoppers Food Warehouse in the Spanish food area. Get the whole stuff… It tastes better. Heck any store that has a big Spanish food section has a better shot)
Throw all of it into a grinder and grind the heck out of it till its all powder (Use a coffee grinder… they work great. Just keep one grinder for coffee and one for spices… mmmm fresh ground spices)

Now The Liquid Part:
In a blender combine:
½ cup of orange juice
½ cup of white vinegar
A few chopped Habenero peppers (about 2 or so)
The Juice of 5 lemons (I recommend juicing 5 lemons yourself… but store bought lemon juice is ok but get the freshest you can)
2 tablespoons of salt
8 cloves of garlic
Blend it up completely liquid (use the “holy crow you pureed it” setting)
Then add and a Splash of good tequila
Basically any good anejo tequila works GREAT.
And that’s the marinade for ya.

For the Meat:
Get 5 Lbs of Pork Shoulder or Pork Butt (hehehe that’s funny) (don’t use chops… they don’t work too well)
Cube into 2 inch squares
Put the squares in a large (gallon size) Ziplock bag pour the marinade over the meat and kind of smoosh it around and coat everything really well.
I marinated the meat for about a day… But you can cook this after marinating for about 4 hours if ya want

Get Cookin’
Get a pan that will hold all the meat comfortably. I recommend a large lasagna pan myself
Line the pan with banana leaves and leave the edges hanging over the sides of the pan (again check the Latin American section of Shoppers Food Warehouse… They’re in the fridge and go for like a little over a buck a bag. One bag should do ya just fine)
Dump the entire contents of the ziplock bag on the banana leaves.
Fold/squish the entire banana leaf overhang over the meat as tight as you can. You can also use more leaves if you need. Just make sure the whole of all the meat is tightly covered on all sides with banana leaves.
Then cover tightly with foil. Make sure that no steam can escape cause that’s how the meat’s cooked.

Cook at 325 degrees for 4 hours.

The intro music is all thanks to Prism Shard. Almost as tasty as Puerco Pibil!