Trompo Tacos Al Pastor!!!
I like Mexican food, and I like BBQ, and I've seen this method in a lot of articles, so I decided to try it. I bought the Trompo King several years ago. An investment in intention, right? This is the maiden voyage.
Anyway, if vertical meat cookin' is unfamiliar to you, here's an article: https://www.columbusfoodadventures.com/2012/blog/los-guachos-and-the-art-of-the-trompo
Note that this can be done horizontally as well.
My overall inspiration was this video.
My sauce recipe was a mashup of these two (below). I'm not sure how anyone else would tailor theirs. I liked the pineapple inclusion, a few other things, but they both entail time... cooking the peppers and pulling the stems and seeds, adding stuff, cooking more... plan three hours.
Sauce 2 (this is a partial recipe, noted here for the peppers)
Be wary to remove the seeds... I did it partially, and when I taste-tested the simmering sauce, I got... you guessed it, seeds. So I had to force-strain my entire sauce batch. Not hard, but time-consuming.
I had almost 8lbs of pork, so I doubled the recipe(s). I used 10 guajillos and 10 pasillas, for example.
So, to begin, cook the sauce (so easy to type it!!!), then cut the pork. This shoulder (or is it butt?? haha backyard griller joke) was unfortunately bone in, so I had to cut around the bone. Then lay the slabs in a pan with the sauce to marinate overnight. The top layer is next. Sauce the slabs in the pan, add the cut pieces, slather the pan again:
You want thin 1/4" slices, the more uniform the better, and you want different size (length/width) slices, as you will be building a tower with a wider base and a skinnier top. Put the little slices in the pan first, so when you build, your large foundation pieces will be at the bottom of your tower. Smart, huh?
Oh, and for pork slicing, freeze the meat for an hour or two just prior, so you're not chasing flabby flesh all over the kitchen. Thanks for the reminder, Linda.
Note the ziplocks in the upper left of the picture above... those are the "uncut-able" bone-in portions of the pork, which Linda will use for something, so all is not lost if you must go bone-in. If you have a Linda, that is.
Move the mess outside (I happen to have a primo worksurface built-in with my grill). Here you see the fire coming up to 250, the Trompo King with the bottom cut from the pineapple awaiting the building of the tower. That pineapple hunk is actually useful as you will see.
Once the meat is skewered, place the pineapple on top and take a picture to try and impress your friends. Note that you haven't actually done any meat cooking yet. This could all be a disaster.
Also notice some upper layers hanging over some lower layers. Try to minimize this. It requires more precise cutting in the first place. Learn by doing!
So the grill got to temp... the recipes called for 250 to 275, and I landed at 262. About. My thermocouple head unit is in the shop, so we're doing the hillbilly Q using the bimetal dome thermometer. OK, so earlier, I did calibrate that dome unit with the thermocouple unit so, yeah, it's pretty accurate. So here we are on/in the grill.
Again, notice the meat overhangs. I'll be trying to avoid these next time. Also notice the shiny pan... which soon will be full of sludge. Sweet sludge, to be sure, but that's the reason for the pineapple chunk at the bottom. No meat will be burning there.
And after five hours, voilá!!!!!!! Basting with leftover sauce, rotating every half-hour or so... I put the pineapple top back on, for show, and almost ran out of sunlight which is a bit problematic for photography.
So yes, if I can do this cook, so can you!!!
Oh, measure your grill grate-to-hood height. I know, right? But it's sorta critical. And yes, they sell shorter skewers.
I did take the money shot of the assembled tacos, but from a photo standpoint, it's embarrassing, so I'm not sharing it. Good food photography is a) hard and b) grounds for divorce, if you're holding up dinner to set up for a decent shot.
Trust me on that.
Comments