10 minute cooking school: Puerco Pibil

10 minute cooking school: Puerco Pibil by Roberto Rodriguez (c)2004.
Filmmaker Roberto Rodriguez shows you how to cook an awesome Mexican dinner. “Not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck”.
For reference, the recipe for Puerco Pibil given here is:

5T whole annato seeds 2t whole cumin seeds
1T peppercorns
8 whole allspice seeds
1/2t whole cloves

Grind the above in a spice mill/coffee grinder.

2 habanero chiles, stems and seeds removed, chopped
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup white vinegar
2T salt
8 cloves garlic

Combine the above with the spice mix in a blender, and puree.

Juice of 5 lemons splash tequila 5 pounds pork butt, cut into 2-inch cubes Combine all ingredients in a zip-top bag and mix well. Line a 9×13 pan with banana leaves; add the pork mixture; fold over the leaves to cover, then cover tightly with foil. Bake 4 hours at 325; serve over rice.

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Comment (22)

  1. I never thought of adding a short of tequila. Simple, yet brilliant! Also, the banana leaves need to be put on top of either your electric or gas stove top first. Use low heat. You'll instantly see the leaves changing color. This'll make them much more pliable when you use them to wrap your pork. Also, they'll give a slight smoky flavor.

  2. My variation:
    – Cut back the citrus a bit. First time I made it, I felt it was rather sour.
    – Cut up the pork, and then smoke it for 15 minutes over a very smoky (and not very hot) BBQ. Put the pork on a sheet of foil so you can keep the juice (fat).
    – Cook in a crock pot on high for 4 hours — no banana leaves needed.

  3. Fabulous recipe! Discovered you can line a crock pot with banana leaves and make this in a crock-pot! Make extra, add hominy and broth for amazing posole!

  4. Just bought a new spice grinder after destroying my previous one making this recipe for 4 years or so. I got 3 large naga chillies instead of habanero peppers, 2 x 80g packs of anatto seeds, all the other ingredients and a nice bottle of Tequila. Come 9pm tonight, should have a fantastic supper!

  5. I've cooked with wine, whiskey, beer, and various liqueurs long before I was old enough to 'legally' buy alcohol. However, my daughter is just now showing an interest in wanting to learn to cook. I'm more of a Southern cook with this alternative side, which one of my dearest friends & the loss of her spirit, light, and most beautiful laugh and how she talked cont's to this day to be heartbreaking. (She fought a long hard battle to save her sight while enduring many, many surgeries to combat sight loss to Diabetic Retinopathy but ultimately she lost the battle while in her pre-teens then later it life, she began a fight for her very light after learning she had breast cancer. She fought the cancer with every ounce of energy & with every fiber in her body but ultimately in the end, cancer won the war… The one thing that gives me some sense of peace is knowing that my friend will remain immortal by the lives she touched, incl'g my own and the lives that those of us who knew & loved her share her light with others so she will live on. Since I am Buddhist, I know that we will ultimately find each other again in our next life; I just hope it is sooner rather than later in life from what it was in this incarnation) My friend always said that the gift I had for preparing Asian dishes that wasn't something I was taught; It was just something I could do but with no idea how I had this knowledge. IT was truly wonderful when we were able to slip off the Chinatown for lunch or dinner or ended up in some obscure yet amazing Japanese restaurant where the there were no chairs when thinking of the usual Americanized notion of chairs. This place had small pillows on the floor that encircled a short tables with each of these tables sitting in their own space that was separated from others by these beautiful cloths that hung from the ceiling to surround the area making it more intimate and other areas that were separated by the neighboring table setup for a couple or a group and some of these were separated by the Silk paneled dividers in order to provide privacy between groups. We went to Greek restaurants that were a lot like these, Indian restaurants, & many others. I love foods from all cultures but the fact I was able to cook some dishes without ever having learned to make them, my friend always said it was b/c there was a mistake when I was born. Somehow I was born into a Southern area with Southern family members when there was no doubt in her mind that I should have been born in NYC b/c I had the heart of a New Yorker & fit in sooo well. LOL!

    But I digress…

    My daughter may try to make this dish when she returns to college in another 2 months. The dorm suite she will be rooming in with 3 of her best friends, has a kitchen area where there's actually a stove w/full working oven. She's 19, and I think her dorm-mates are all 18, almost 19 to around 20 but none over 21. Is there anything she can use as a substitute for the Tequila in order to make this dish taste as it should or would it be best If I just picked up maybe a dozen 'airplane/hotel room mini-bar' size bottles of Tequila & send those with her to use when making this recipe along with a few others I have cooked before that requires Tequila to bring out the flavor? I just can't imagine her RA busting her for having what really amounts to nothing more than 'cooking sherry' or 'cooking wine' rather than having a giant bottle of Limoncello, Patron, Crown Royal, or stocking her a bar with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label! Heck, if I was going to do something of that nature, I would be having a full-size family room bar built in my home, complete with Johnnie Walker Black Label & trying a few back-channels I've had & used in the past to get my hands on Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve… LOL!

    Any ideas are welcome.

    Also, forgive the rambling. I've been fighting with a Lupus & Fibromyalgia flare, which comes with Lupus & Fibro-Fog, which is about the closest to feeling as if you are experiencing what it must be like for people with Alzheimer's, only without actually having the disease itself…

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