Power to the Pibil

I spent the last week sequestered in my Cone of Silence. The cone was prepared in the traditional manner and my stay was pleasant.

One of the things I yearned to share last week, but was not able to (due to the aforementioned Cone of Silence), was exciting developments in pork pibil. Or more specifically, cochinita pibil, which is a close cousin to good old pork pibil. I saw this recipe in the May issue of Bon Appétit and singled it out for experimentation.

I bought two pork butts for a total of 10 pounds of porcine goodness - following the longstanding 5lb of meat per person rule. I quickly ran into problems however when I tried to buy the ingredients for the marinade, it calls for ¼ cup of anchiote paste. I’ve never seen nor heard of anchiote paste. I’m only vaguely aware that anchiote is some sort of pepper. Dawn and I tried multiple food sources and kept coming up empty on anchiote paste….or anchiotes period. In the end I made some wild substitutions for the paste. I used one Latino spice packet mix of which anchiote was the very last ingredient, one chipotle bouillon cube (because I read that anchiote paste comes as a compressed powder and is then hydrated, I figured this is similar), and four smoked mystery peppers (per pork butt).

Kroger had these giant smoked peppers in their produce section with no identification or pricing information anywhere to be found. I suspect that they were chipotles. I tried to ask one of the produce people about them but she looked startled at the notion of providing information. She basically said that while she was working in the produce section, that was no guarantee or indication that she knew anything about produce. Fair enough. Then for good measure she added “I don’t even cook.” I appreciated that she was hedging her bets and letting me know that even a general question about food would be unwelcomed and unanswered.

The checkout line the employee was equally perplexed by the peppers and none of his produce documentation hinted at anything that might reveal its identity. Eventually he looked me square in the eye and asked “would you say fifteen cents would be a fair price for this item.” I curtly nodded and our conspiracy to buy unnamable goods was complete.

Whatever the mystery peppers may have been or however close my anchiote paste approximation may have resulted- the final product rocked. I put the well marinated pork butts on the Black Evil Egg at 220 degrees and let them cruise for about eight hours. Towards the end I started to raise the grill’s temperature because I wanted to eat that day and a pork butt can hang out on a 220 fire for close to twenty hours if you let it. The resulting pork wasn’t quiet shareable, but was super tender and made for some amazing soft tacos, and sandwiches, and salad topping, and soup addition. Basically we happily ate pork all last week (it’s good Cone of Silence food). So revered was our pork pibil that it was bestowed the honoree title of “Ham,” which as you well know, is only bestowed upon the most splendid of porcine products (well that or “Bacon”).