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One thing that is very important to note if making Cochinita Pibil is that most achiote pastes are already prepared with other spices and herbs that you will need in your recipe. You will also need to source the other spices required for the marinade, which isn’t difficult. If buying raw, you will need to bloom the seeds in some fat before soaking in liquid. I recommend buying the paste simply for sake of convenience and flavour, even though it will likely contain a small amount of corn flour. You can buy the seeds raw and whole or in the form of a paste made with other spices and herbs. When used in larger quantities the flavour is earthy, peppery and slightly bitter. It can be used as a spice, food colourant or textile dye. However, there are a few usual suspects that show up in every cochinita pibil.Īchiote, also called Annato, are the seeds of the Bixa orellana shrub.

The marinade for the pork differs slightly depending on the family recipe. Simply adjust the temperature setting and go do something else while your pork cooks. If you have a Traeger, it’s as easy as using your slow cooker. You get all the benefits from the dry heat of the oven while imparting smokey flavour that mimics the pib. Smoking the pork is the method that likely yields the most flavourful results. One of the benefits of the oven is that the dry heat changes the flavour of the banana leaves while trapping any of the steam inside, keeping the pork super juicy and moist. Similar to the slow cooker, you can roast the cochinita pibil low-and-slow for around 4 hours or lower-and-slower for 7-8 hours. Though roasting in the oven is as easy as using a slow cooker, it means that you can’t leave the house just in case something goes awry. I know, cardinal sin! But the flavour is just too intense and overpowers everything else. Personally, if using the slow cooker, I omit the banana leaves altogether (as shown in the pictures). When steamed, as is the case in the slow cooker, I find that the intense flavour of the banana leaves is amplified. The only thing I’m not crazy about with the slow cooker is the lack of some dry heat, which changes the way the banana leaves taste. If cooking boneless, you can probably shave one hour off of the low-heat cooking time. Either way, you’ll return to a perfectly cooked, incredibly soft and juicy cochinita pibil.ĭepending on the thickness of your pork shoulder, it will take you at least 4 hours on high heat or between 7-8 hours on low heat if cooking a bone-in piece of meat. You can start it before going to bed at night or before leaving to work in the morning.

It’s as easy as placing the marinated meat in the vessel, turning it on and walking away. The path of least resistance is undoubtedly the slow cooker. And, yes, I know! None of these can truly be called cochinita pibil because they aren’t cooked in a pib. Dry heat, smoke and steamwill each bring something different to the table, pun intended. Luckily, there are some workarounds to the pit-digging and whole-hog requirements.Īside from ingredients, which we’ll get to in a second, the biggest impact on the taste of your cochinita pibil is the method you use to cook it. Nor do city bylaws that likely prohibit digging pits in public parks for the purposes of slow-roasting suckling pigs (I think?). Alas, apartment living just doesn’t allow for such luxuries. Believe me, there’s nothing I would love more than to follow the “traditional and authentic” route, build a pib (stone-lined pit), marinate an entire suckling pig, and slowly cook some cochinita pibil as the sun sets over Toronto.