You’re goddamn right there’s not.
Qucik question, I can get bone in Pork butt roast for $1.99 on sale this week. Would that work with this pernil marinade?
It definitely would, yeah. The biggest difference is the big skin-flap on top of the pernil, which slowly crisps up into a glorious crunchy-chewy layer of marinated chicharonnes, more or less (depending on baking style and luck; the one my friend Marisol made a few months ago was glorious). But the actual marinade is still absolutely delicious for slow-roasted pork in general.
And *signs the Cross* you can make a pretty wicked Cubano sandwich with the meat leftovers, I hear. . .
I used:
3 tbsp Salt
12 cloves Garlic
2 tsp Black pepper
1 tbsp Dried Oregano
1 tbsp Cumin
3/4 cup Olive Oil
3/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
For my marinade, all blitzed in a food processor. That was enough for a 9lb pork shoulder. Which I stabbed, repeatedly. And forced the chunky-fragrant marinade into said stabs. This is apparently key.
Thanks! Most of this is going to be sandwich meat anyway, as I am going camping next week and wanted some easy but tasty boat food. Also thanks for the recipe and the methodology as well. I do think that I want to go with something citrus based though and the orange/lemon combo really got my attention. I am guessing I can just swap out the “sour orange” for the apple cider vinegar and it will work fine? I wants to do this right, I gots people to impress!
Yep, I think that’ll work very well. The acidity of OJ + LJ may not be exactly identical to vinegar, but when you’re marinating 8-48 hours, I don’t think that matters so much. . .
Best substitute for naranja agria is a 2:1 ratio lemon:orange. Include the peels in the marinade too. Wipe the peels off before roasting if you’re doing pernil, or toss them in the pot with all the lard and juice if you’re doing carnitas-- carnitas are essentially pork butt confit.
Tonight! Pork pernil with mofongo, garlicky green beans, and leftover arroz con gandules!
The pork after 2 hours under a foil tent to try to preserve moisture and then 2 hours uncovered, including a final 20m at a higher temp (recipes heavily disagreed on this step, so I went half with-foil and half without).
The pernil after I foolishly tried to crisp up some of the less-crispy skin near the “back” portion by broiling it–on the very bottom rack and only for 90 seconds mind–and wound up making some of the skin bubble up like pork cracklins (which, in fairness, it basically is.
Bowl of the green beans I made: mortar-and-pestled some garlic and aji dulces–sweet peppers–then mixed in a basic vinaigrette of olive oil and vinegar with salt and pepper. Blanched the green beans, drained, and let em cool, then mixed 'em in.
Final plate: last night’s arroz con gandules, the green beans, a helping of the pork, including a slice of the skin, and then a mound of mofongo–fried green plantains mortar-and-pestle’d with garlic, oregano, salt, Adobo, and actual pork cracklins, shaped, and then doused in some of the leftover liquid in the pernil pan.
Overall, despite my fuckup with the broiler and accidentally cutting off from the saltiest part of the pernil (at the bottom of my marinade bowl, I found a big pile of barely-mixed-in salt and, being at my wit’s end from handling such a huge piece of raw meat and the sloppy, slimy marinade in a too-small roasting tray, I just dumped it on, wearily smeared at it for a few seconds, and left it be overnight, so the part where that salt-glob hit is a real sodium-bomb), tonight’s supper was absolutely incredible.
10/10, would Puerto Rico again.
Damn that looks good! I have really got to give the fried plantains thing a go when I make my Cuban Pork. I already have a caribbean rice and beans recipe from serious eats and the fried plantains would be a good finisher.
Can you guys get Cuban bread where you are? Because cuban sandwiches are simple but amazing.
It’s possibly available at a nearby restaurant (unclear if they still do public sales of the loaves, but they did a decade ago at least), but aside from that, I might be out of luck, sadly. Which is unfortunate, cuz I’d love to make a Cuban-style sandwich with some leftovers.
That pork you have there would be fine. A lot of the shops around here have moved from sliced deli meat style roast pork and started putting what is essentially pulled cuban pork on the sandwiches. And it’s amazing. Suuuuper amazing. So that and cuban bread are really the only things that might be hard-ish to find to make a good cuban.
Use half sour pickles if you can find them. My grandpa was eating these sandwiches in the 40s and 50s. :)
If you like Cuban rolls you’ll have to move to Florida, folks. :)
I mean I like them a lot, but I hear that asshole Rich lives down in Florid–oh hey there, man, how are you? ;-)
Yeah. I hate that guy.
That looks like gumbo without the sauce.
Or like a crawfish boil without the shells.
Or a crab boil. The shells bring a lot of flavor (as does a ton of Old Bay.)
Looks delicious, @TimElhajj!
And the cuban pork roast is slow cooking as we speak. And bonus! They ran out of the $1.99/lb pork butt roast at the store so they substituted bone in shoulder roast, with the skin. Smells fantastic! Hopefully it comes out as planned.
So, pizza again as a topic.
We have basil in the garden, so off I wen to try and make margherita pizza that was in the food section of our local paper. The dough turned out well. I opened a can of diced tomatoes and prepped some mozzarella for the toppings. A pizza stone was heated up on my my grill and…
My first two attempts resulted in blackened bottoms that were so charred as to be inedible. The third and fourth attempts were better with a nice bottom crust but I found the top of the crust to be a bit under done.
Any good advice for solving this problem that do not involve using a cast iron skillet? I’m thinking maybe I might try rolling the dough out to be really thin.