Building the al pastor marinade
Ok so we've toasted the chiles, we know what guajillo does and what ancho does, and now we actually build the thing. This is where it all comes together, and honestly it's the easiest part of the whole cook once you've got your toasted chiles sitting there ready.
Here's the plan. Rehydrate the chiles first. Then blend with the aromatics and pineapple. Then salt it properly, because that's a step people skip and shouldn't.
Rehydrating the chiles
Drop your toasted guajillos and anchos into a bowl and cover em with hot water, just off the boil. Let them sit 15-20 minutes until they're soft and pliable, not falling apart, just soft like a raisin that's been sitting in something wet. You want them to bend without cracking.
Don't throw out that soaking liquid. It's got chile flavor in it and you'll want some of it to loosen the blend later.
What goes in the blender
Once the chiles are soft, into the blender they go with:
- 1/2 a white onion, rough chopped
- 3-4 cloves garlic
- 2-3 tablespoons of white vinegar
- about 1/4 cup fresh pineapple, small dice
- a splash of the soaking liquid, maybe 1/4 cup to start
Blend it until it's smooth, not chunky. If it's too thick to move in the blender, add more soaking liquid a little at a time. You're going for something like a thick pancake batter. Thinner than salsa, thicker than juice.
Here's the thing about the pineapple, and I say this because I learned it the hard way. It's not really in there for flavor at this stage, its in there for the enzyme that helps break down the pork. A little goes a long way. My first time doing this at home I dumped in way more than I needed and let it sit in there too long thinking more pineapple equals more good, and the whole batch turned to something that looked like baby food. Ximena still brings that one up. So a quarter cup, not a whole pineapple's worth.
Salt it now, not later
This is my one real opinion here and I'll say it every time somebody's building a marinade or a salsa: salt the marinade, not just the meat. People think you salt the pork separately and the marinade just carries flavor. No. If the marinade itself tastes flat when you dip a spoon in and taste it, the meat's gonna come out flat too, no matter how much salt you hit the outside with later.
Start with about 1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt in the blend, taste it, then adjust. It should taste a little aggressive on its own, almost too salty, because it's about to get diluted into a big pile of pork.
Getting it on the meat
Slice your pork shoulder into thin slabs, quarter-inch or so, against the grain. Doesn't need to be pretty. You want surface area so the marinade actually touches everything, not one big chunk sitting in a bowl of sauce.
Layer the pork in a container, pour the marinade over, work it in with your hands so every piece gets coated. Cover it and get it in the fridge. Minimum 4 hours, but overnight is better if you've got the time. This is not one of those marinades you can rush in 20 minutes and call it good.
One thing I'll say plainly: don't leave marinating pork sitting out on the counter while you go do something else. Fridge, every time, especially with raw pork. It's not complicated, just don't skip it.
And don't do what I did one time, which is make a giant batch thinking you're being smart about meal prep, freeze it, and then find it in the deep freeze eight months later freezer burned to nothing. If you're gonna freeze extra marinade, use it within a month and actually write the date on it. I own that one's on me, not the recipe.
A quick aside on lime
You will be tempted to squeeze lime into this marinade because lime and al pastor go together in your head. Don't. Acid in a marinade this long can actually start making the texture weird if you overdo it, and besides, lime's real job is at the very end, on the finished taco, where the heat hasn't killed it yet. Save it.
Speaking of lime and kids getting overly excited about citrus, I taught a couple of the Primary kids to squeeze lime over corn on the cob as a treat during an activity day once, and one of them just started eating straight lime wedges like candy the rest of the afternoon. Their mom texted me about it later. I apologized. Still worth it though, because that's the kind of enthusiasm you want people to have about acid on food, even if it goes a little sideways.
Before next time
Get your pork sliced and into the marinade before you come to the next session, even if it's just a quick overnight sit in the fridge. We'll be picking up right where the meat's ready to cook, and I don't want anybody starting from a cold bowl of raw pork. 🔥