Writer's Grove

Cochinita Pibil

You’ve probably had carnitas, yeah? Slow-cooked shredded pork shoulder in a suite of spices. Cochinita Pibil takes carnitas up a notch or five, a recipe hailing from the Yucatán peninsula. I’ve had it at a few taco joints now and it’s always amazing, so I had to learn how to make it at home. Cochinita is a suckling pig, which we aren’t doing, and Pibil means pit cooking, and we aren’t doing that either. So this won’t be traditional stuff—I’m using modern cheats that deliver a turbo tasty result with a bit more convenience. (If you missed my other homage to Mexican cuisine, a simplified chicken posole, you can peruse that at leisure.)

First thing: You need achiote paste. That’s the key ingredient here and you can’t switch it out with something else. But it’s not usually available in most grocery stores, so this is going to require a trip to a Latin market near you. And the trip is worth it. I checked prices: A certain giant retailer named after a river in South America was offering a 3.5 ounce package at $9.49 Canadian. Same exact product at the Latin market? $3.49 Canadian. That giant river can go eff itself.

So! Grab yourself a pork shoulder at the grocery. If you’ve never bought one before, you’ll discover that it’s pretty economical compared to a lot of other meats. I went down the US for it and got a 4 lb. shoulder for $7.76. It’s netted, and you gotta free it from the net and then cut it into chunklets about 1.5-2 inches. You don’t have to worry bigly about variations—you’re going to shred it later. The chunks help it all get cooked and tenderized properly. Throw your chunklets into your crockpot or other slow cooker. (You do this before you go to work and it’s ready when you get home.)

Now we make our marinade. Here’s whatcha need to throw into a blender:
1 3.5 oz package of achiote paste
1 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice, don’t use Minute Maid dang it
1/2 cup fresh-squeezed lime juice, squeeze it yourself
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
1 cinnamon stick—yeah, for reals

That’s the bit where you can get creative. Add other spices, onion, garlic, whatever you like. Everything is negotiable except the achiote, orange, and lime juice. If you’re doing it old-school then you’re using bitter Seville oranges, but those aren’t things you find in Canada, eh? So the combination of regular orange juice and lime juice is a workaround. I found that four limes’ worth of squeezins got me a half cup, but your mileage may vary.

Blend it on medium or high until the cinnamon stick stops making heinous crackling death screams. It will look like you killed the neighbour who lets his Chihuahua poop on your lawn and now you’re making a smoothie out of his inconsiderate heart.

Pour your bright-orange marinade over your chonks in the crockpot/slow cooker, turn that sucker on low, and go to work— AFTER you wash out that blender, post-haste, because achiote stains like a mofo.

If you wanted to adhere a bit more closely to traditional methods, you’d be marinating the meat overnight and then wrapping the marinated meat in banana leaves and cooking them in a pit. The slow cooker allows us to marinate and cook at the same.

So you’ve gone to work and made that money. You come home and your house smells amazing. Your dog, if you have one, has spent the entire afternoon drooling on all your furniture. Everything glistens. Grab two forks and put on a playlist of your favorite heavy metal, then you and your band just start shredding. (If I may suggest “Redneck” by Lamb of God, you’ll have that cochinita shredded in no time.) The pork chunklets are gonna be so tender that they’ll practically auto-execute the shred command, and once that task is finished, it’s time to go down to taco town. Oh, and remember I said that the achiote stains? I’d recommend shredding on some aluminum foil or something to protect your fine counters/cutting boards. In the picture you’ll see the chunklets on the left, shreds on the right. I placed the meat on a taco, then spooned some juices back on—get it wet. There’s a lovely sweetness to the meat because of the orange juice.

You don’t need a lot else to serve this up: Corn tortillas, pickled onions, cilantro, and That Thing You Like to Drink with Mexican food. These days I’m into Corona Sunbrews—they taste exactly like regular Coronas. Cheers, friends!