Cochinita Pibil | The Slow Roasted Pork You Need to Know

Mexican food is as diverse as it gets. Different states have different dishes, ingredients, and heritage that define each of the states. For example, the Yucatan Peninsula has a rich Mayan history and that defines a lot of what makes those dishes delicious. Cochinita Pibil, for example, is one of those dishes that is very particular to the region. Traditionally, small pigs would be marinated, wrapped in banana leaves, and then slow roasted in ovens called pigs. They'd be underground and kind of smoky and the process of cooking them renders all the fat and you get a crazy delicious magical concoction. Now, I don't have the underground oven required to make this slow roasted pork, but I'm willing to bet that you don't either. So I'll show you how to make it in a home oven, something that's going to be super accessible and easy for you to replicate. I'm also going to show you the snipec, which is going to be the salsa that we pair with it. It's got onions and habaneros. It's nice and spicy and bright and acidic, perfect to cut through the pork's richness. Let's make it. The key workflow we need to make this recipe work is as follows. We'll make the marinade, cut our pork, get the whole thing in the oven. Then we can make the snipec and hang out until the pork is tender. We're going to need the oven at 325 Fahrenheit for this. For that marinade, I think a blender is key. It's going to make our job much easier. Add half a block of achiote paste. This is made of spices, annatto seeds, and a little bit of like a stabilizer to make it into a block. This is paramount for the color and flavor of the pork. It's got a beautiful brick red that's going to stain pretty much everything, so be careful. It's earthy, acidic, and very distinct. This dish does not work without it. A big handful of garlic cloves go in, like six to eight, and then we need a bunch of citrus. So to the blender, add the juice from half a grapefruit. Save the other half, we're going to need it later. The juice of a whole orange and the juice of a whole lime. This gets pretty close to the flavor of the bitter orange used in traditional recipes. For seasoning, add half a teaspoon of Mexican oregano, a fourth teaspoon of clove, a half teaspoon of cinnamon, and two teaspoons of cumin. I also like to add a big spoon of caldo de pollo, just for extra salt and MSG goodness. To set myself up, I'll layer my dutch oven with washed banana leaves. The pork is going to need somewhere to go when it's cut, so this is going to be the landing zone. Banana leaves are pretty easy to find nowadays. The problem is you get so many of them and they're huge, they're kind of hard to wash. Just wash them as best you can and cut them down to size. Because we're making this in a dutch oven, it's easier, we don't need to wrap it super tightly in the leaves. Two pound pork shoulder is good for this, but it makes enough marinade for about double that if needed. You could leave this whole if you wanted, but that's just going to increase the cooking time by quite a bit with almost no upside. Cut these into big chunks and then season them generously with salt. It's easier to season the meat correctly than to guess the amount of salt needed in the marinade. For two pounds of pork, we need about two teaspoons of salt, but we also want to make sure the marinade is seasoned as well, so go a little heavy on it. Time to blend the marinade and get everything into the pot. Add the pork, pour on that marinade, and then I just like to use tongs to move around the pork to make sure everything is fully coated. This is going to stew in this for a really long time, so it's not that important that the pork is touching all sides of the marinade. It's going to move around, it's going to sort of start to get all in those crevices as it cooks. Add a sliced onion to the top and cover the whole thing with more banana leaves. They bring a bunch of moisture to the pot and a slightly smoky clove flavor that's missing if you just leave them out. Pop on the lid and get that into the oven for around two and a half to three hours. Depending on how fatty your pork is, it may need two and a half hours, it may need three. Just check it at the two and a half hour mark. Pork's super easy, very hands-off from this point forward. The shnipek is a deliciously spicy combination of red onion, habanero, and citrus — an essential topping for pibil. One or two habaneros per red onion is usually a good ratio to go off of. Slice the onions into nice thin strips. As always, I go pole to pole, I just think it works a lot better here. Go ahead and season those with salt now. Deseed the habaneros and chop them pretty fine. I like to cut them into strips, then a dice, and then I rock my knife over the pile to allow them to incorporate more easily into the onions. I don't want to be biting into a big piece of habanero because it can be pretty spicy. The pickling is going to come from grapefruit juice and lime juice. About two limes worth should be good, plus the half of a grapefruit that we saved earlier. Mix that and let it hang in the fridge. In a day, this is really incredible, but it's also usable in a few hours as well. So just make this right after you get your pork in the oven and let it sit in the fridge. Time to check on the pork. This is the big reveal we've been waiting for. I expected this to not quite be there yet, but it was perfect. My pork was pretty fatty. Right at about two and a half hours, the pork is oh so tender. It's just ready to fall apart. Remove the banana leaves, and we've got two options. If you have a ton of liquid left, you can take the pork out and set the pot over the stove to reduce. If there's not a lot of liquid, though, just shred the pork and get stuck in. I've got quite a bit left, so reduction is my best bet. I also think it's a good idea to taste this and see if it needs more salt. Mix the pork into that reduced liquid and get a few tortillas ready. Top them with the pibil and schneepek, and that's the dish done. With the amount of flavor you're getting out of this, it's incredible how hands-off this dish is. Just whack everything into a big pot, get it in the oven, and then go do other stuff for like two and a half to three hours. So, so simple. I've got my pibil in little tacos, but you can do this in a rice bowl. What's nice is you can make a big batch of this. You need about the same amount of marinade for this much pork, or like double the amount of pork. It works really well for big batches. You can sort of meal prep this if you're one of those people where you make a huge batch, and then you got pibil for rice, or for tacos, or for anything you want to put it on. All right, let's get into it. This pork is so tender. I like to cut it down into pieces because it gets tender a lot faster. Marinade can get more into the pork way quicker that way. Using achiote paste gets you such a specific, distinct, kind of smoky, acidic, red flavor that it's perfect. It's exactly what you want it to be, and it's exactly what you think it's going to taste like. That's exactly what you want when you're cooking something that's normally made in an underground oven in your home oven. I think using a dutch oven in the banana leaves gets such a distinct flavor. It tastes kind of like clove. So if you don't have the banana leaves, I think you could easily just add a little bit more clove into your marinade and get away with it. But the flavor and the smell of the banana leaves is really nice and pretty apparent. You do definitely notice it in this pork. These onions, the shnipek, it's so perfect to cut through everything going on in the pork. This is rich and fatty and somewhat bright and acidic, but mostly kind of deep and dark. Delicious, bright, spicy, pickled. Such a good contrast to the pork going on in here. It's like the most tender, so flavorful, absolutely unreal. I love cochinita pipil so, so much. Thank you so much for watching. Really appreciate you being here. Massive shout out to the amazing people supporting me directly on Patreon through patreon.com slash Cameron Marty. I get some cool benefits for supporting the channel and I get to keep making videos like this, so it's a win-win. Consider checking it out and consider becoming a patron. Now, if you enjoyed this video and like what I'm doing here, go ahead and like it. Go ahead and subscribe. I make videos like this pretty much every week, so you'll get a lot more of this type of content. Thanks again for watching. Cheers.