- Just hold the pig over the top of it for a minute.
(Grant laughing)
(Latin music)
Here we are, again at my home,
with my good friend, Jonathan Zaragoza.
We're ready to cook the ultimate cochinita pibil.
- Ultimate. - Ultimate.
- And so the essentials that you need
to make cochinita pibil are wood,
and some sort of oven to cook it in.
The pig, the marinade- - Yeah.
- Onions (indistinct), banana leaves.
Yeah. And usually they bury it in the ground.
So. - We did this on purpose.
Usually it's underground.
This one, fully on top.
I'll tell you why later.
(upbeat Latin music)
Normally, if Jonathan and I
were just to do the kind of trad pibil,
what we would do is have to dig a big,
watch your toes.
Probably bigger than that,
I would think bigger than that, realistically.
- [Jonathan] Mm-hmm. - We did a huge hole
deep enough for like this pot.
- Yeah. And to clear it just a little bit.
- Yep. So we gotta dig a huge hole
big enough for that pot, and more material.
'Cause bricks and wood and all that stuff.
There's a bunch of videos out there
on how to just dig a hole
and set it on fire and bury it.
We could do that.
But, the more I was thinking about it,
the more I was like we can build a mobile,
take anywhere ultimate pib oven
that you can use for other stuff too.
- For sure. - That you can just
put on top of the ground.
- So we're gonna make one that has all the principles
of the traditional oven,
and the consistency of the like at home oven.
But we're gonna do it above ground.
Or the restaurant version you do
is like about temperature timed.
- [Jonathan] Yeah. 300 degrees I'd say
for like six to eight hours
would be something. - Yeah.
- [Jonathan] Yeah. Just till it's tender
and kind of falling apart.
- [Grant] Mellow. - Because in the restaurant
setting you know, it's consistency.
We wanna make sure we give the customer
the same product every time.
Can't really bury a pit in the ground
every time you want to cook cochinita.
So. - We've already got
your amazing marinade going.
I love the recipe.
And by the way, we've got the at-home version for this
that you developed. - On Chefsteps.com.
- On Chefsteps.com. I love it.
So you can have Jonathan's amazing restaurant style
in your own home oven.
But today we gotta build this big oven,
'cause we got a whole pig,
and we got a lot of people to feed.
Let's get going.
(bouncy music)
You just need a big fireproof barrel.
And then now, we're going to build it out and insulate it.
Just like an underground traditional pib.
We're gonna stack all our wood
(mimics vibration sound)
around it.
Oh dude. Almost there.
- I like where it's going.
- Then, we're gonna put our pot in.
But I think we want a more heat under the pot too.
- For sure. - So we'll get some like
bricks under there.
- Mm-hmm. - Cool, man.
- Dude, this looks insane.
- And then this guy we'll set up just in case...
I feel like we run the risk of making it too hot maybe.
- Maybe. - So maybe we'll do extra
banana leaf or whatever.
- Yeah. - Cool.
- Insulate it.
- Let's do it brother. - Sounds good.
- [Grant] Until tomorrow morning.
(upbeat Latin music)
(mimics pig squealing) - [Jonathan] Just kidding.
Alright, we've got our whole hog.
We need to break it down for our cochinita pibil.
- Yep. So we need to get it down to smaller parts
because we want even seasoning, even flavor,
and even cooking.
- Let's get some knives.
- Let's get it.
- Oh yeah. Things bigger than the pig.
- So we're gonna break down this pig.
Usually at the restaurant we break down goats,
but we're gonna treat it kind of the same way
because it's gonna cook very similar to our birrieria.
So, we're just gonna break off some shoulders here,
expose the neck, get the neck off,
get the head separated,
and then kind of move down to the loin and belly.
- Love it. - Yeah.
- Have at it. - We follow our hearts
while we're at it, - Aww.
- 'Cause there's no wrong way to do it.
There's one, just gonna follow that down.
Number two.
(Jonathan sawing bone)
- There you go.
- Finish the rest of the way
with the knife just to not mess up the meat.
There's belly.
So you can see like the belly was like connected there.
And again the belly has no bones in it.
So you'll see the natural seam
that we're gonna cut along,
and just under this section right here of the loin.
Again, we want to get everything
cut up into even pieces,
like around the same size. - Yeah.
- Just so they can can cook evenly too.
So we'll break these down into like sub primals.
(Jonathan sawing bone)
(Grant chopping bone) (Jonathan cutting bone)
(Jonathan sawing bone)
There it is.
So even chefs need some support
and some friends every once in a while.
- It's usually a coffee and kitchen towels.
That's my support system at the restaurant.
- And blue tape.
- And blue tape. - Yeah.
- [Jonathan] My emotional support tape.
- [Grant] Aww. - I told you
that in confidence.
(bones breaking)
- So we're gonna organize these cuts
based on cook time or texture that we want.
The loin will go on top of the pot,
and the ribs and the belly will go right under that.
The saddle and the neck area will go under that.
And then moving into shoulders, hams,
and the head will be at the bottom.
- Okay. We weighed this pig when we got it,
and it came in with a weight of 65 lbs.
And you wanna do 1% salt for a day or so.
- Yeah. - So we just need to salt it,
get it on trays, put it in the fridge.
- [Jonathan] That's it. - Done for the day.
- Yep. - Tomorrow's marinade,
next day's cooking.
Alright, we've turned this big pig
into lots of little pig parts.
- [Jonathan] Small parts. - Yeah. Yeah. Salted it.
We're gonna let it hang out for a day.
Tomorrow's the marinade, then we cook.
- That's it. Simple.
- Let's do it.
- Let's get it. - Oh God.
- You gave me the heavy one, Dude.
(Grant laughs mischievously)
(Latin music)
- (singing) Making marinade.
It's time to be at the house
and do the rest of the pig stuff.
- Yes, sir. - We've got a cooler full
of pig meat. (buzzer sounds)
- Pork parts. - Pork parts.
(bell dings) And now we need
to make your marinade.
- So this is what we would call a recado in the Yucatan.
So this is a recado rojo.
Sometimes you'll see a black recado,
or a green one as well.
Those are the three common ones.
I know. It smells so good.
So this is annatto seed paste
that's already prepared.
I really like the color that it adds to the marinade.
In here we have more annatto seeds that are whole.
They're a little bit more of like an earthy color.
So we're gonna toast this up.
And then some garlic.
And that'll make the recado rojo.
At that point, it'll be a recado.
Really traditionally you can use it
to smear on fish or pork.
But because we're gonna marinate it,
we're gonna bloom it in some citrus.
So usually you see it
in the sour orange juice that you find in the Yucatan.
- Mm-hmm. - We don't have that.
So we're gonna do split base of orange juice,
lime juice, and also apple cider vinegar.
- Whoa. - Just to kind of
wake everything up.
So we're gonna toast the seeds and spices
in a pan over the charcoal.
We're doing a technique called tatemar.
Tatemar is just cooking at a high heat,
in a comal or a non-sick pan.
And you get kind of like complex
and sweet aromas from it.
So I like toasting my
spices in a cold pan to start
just so they don't scorch right away.
And all we're looking for is just
for them to be aromatic
and kind of warm just through,
to activate the flavors.
And then we're gonna pull 'em off
and start making our marinade.
So, our garlic's pretty much where we want it.
You can see it's like tender and charred.
You got some beautiful leoparding on it
from the dry roasting the tatemado.
And then if you see this texture here,
it's like super, it's tender,
but it's still charred.
It's got like a lot of character.
There's a lot of levels in there.
So this is what we're looking for.
And even the sound changes.
- [Grant] Okay, we got all our toasty spices.
- Yep. We're about to make our marinade.
So if you wanted to make the recado rojo,
you would just do these ingredients,
maybe a little bit of water or stock
and get it kind of a paste going.
- Just enough to make it a paste.
- Right. Just enough to get it moving in the blender.
But here we're marinating a bunch of pork,
so we're gonna stretch it with our wonderful juice.
And again, this kind of
cut through that earthiness of this.
A lot of citrus, a lot of great flavors going on.
So I want to get it into the blender
and then kind of work in batches,
and get it all mixed up.
Marinate the pork.
Let's get it.
(Latin music)
(blender grinding) - Oh yeah.
You don't like how chunky it is?
- No, I just want a little bit smoother.
(blender grinding)
- You juice that?
(upbeat Latin music)
Whew! The annatto seed,
that's what gives the main color right here.
It's got a really earthy flavor,
very astringent as well.
It's just like a quintessential flavor for the cochinita.
Other than the flavor,
the color is like what makes it
that brick red color.
So we're gonna mix it up a little bit.
- Okay. So we got our marinade.
- Yep. - Our rocada rojo.
We have our pig parts.
- Pig parts in a bag.
- Big garbage bags. So handy.
Even if somebody's gonna do this at home,
I don't wanna put 80 pounds of pig meat in my fridge,
plus 10 more pounds of marinade, plus, plus.
So we're just cover it all up,
let's get it all marinatey,
and then throw it right back in the cooler.
See you tomorrow. - Yep.
- Here were gonna use this whole bowl, right?
- Yeah. - Yes.
- Oh dude.
- There's nothing sexy about this guys.
- [Woman] Let's do it. - We got two garbage bags
- Full of body parts. - Full of pig parts,
and some really good sauce.
- So you could,
you can close it and then marinate it as well.
That's what I was doing.
Just massage it. - Yep.
- Yeah. So I'm gonna do two different...
- So I didn't do that. - I know. It's okay.
This is what I'm gonna do. - I like touching it.
- I know you do.
- I want to get in.
See you tomorrow. - Uno, dos, tres.
(Latin music) - Nailed it.
- [Grant] Let's like this thing.
- Morning time.
- It's so early in the morning.
Alright, we got our fire lit.
It's gonna take a couple hours to burn down into coals.
And from here, we've gotta actually fill our pot.
- Right. - So we've gotta pack
all the cochinita in a pot.
So we're gonna go work on that,
check on it in the next couple hours.
Hopefully get the cochinita cooking in the next hour or so.
And then from there, we'll be on cruise control.
(Latin music)
We have to build our big pot of meat.
We gotta get all of our pig meat,
(buzzer sounds) pig parts in our pot.
But we don't just throw it in a pot.
There's a special way to do it.
So we've got a big giant pot.
We've got banana leaves.
To be totally honest, Jonathan,
I've only cooked the banana leaves a couple times.
Once doing the cochinita pibil-
- Yeah. - In like a pot.
- Why do we cook 'em or heat 'em and...
- Yeah, so like if you can smell that,
- It smells really good.
- Smells like a super like-
- [Grant] Green. - Grassy.
Grassy green under ripe banana.
So they go from like super rigid
to like very, very tender and supple,
and easily malleable to like wrap around the pig.
Also, it's gonna act as like you said, an insulator.
You wanna build the bottom ones like,
just so long as there's no pot showing, you know.
I'm so excited for this thing, man.
- [Grant] Mm-hmm. - Yeah, we want more.
So what we're gonna do is like,
at this point start like,
start it down low so we get more layers on the bottom,
and then start overlapping them on the edges.
So when we close the pot, you just fold it over.
- All we're trying to do is have
enough insulation on the bottom
and on the side so those coals
and hot rocks don't burn our cochinita.
And that's the main goal here.
And the exact right amount,
like, hmm, I don't know about like,
if we have five, six, seven layers,
that feels about right. - Yeah. It feels good.
- Alright. So we're gonna line the
cuts that take longer to cook, at the bottom,
just 'cause they have more contact with the heat.
And then kinda layer the thinner cuts on top.
(Grant whistles)
Down below. - Ah dude.
- Yeah, man. And we'll go a little head down there.
Shoulder. - Don't forget to shingle the-
- Shingle the cut- - The face.
- Shingle the face.
- Here's some ribs.
- Love it. - Ooh, Belly, saddle, neck.
I can't see.
- Alright, we're in.
- Alright buddy. - Hey.
- You did a good job. - Good job.
- We're gonna do this. - Not the forearm shake.
- We've got this. - We're not doing
the forearm shake. (both laughing)
- So, I didn't see this coming,
but Jonathan's like, yeah duh, we're adding the lard.
- We're adding lard. Super lean.
And also I saw this
at a place in Yucatan called Pueblo Pibil,
and some of the best cochinita I've ever had.
So we're, we're doing as the Romans do my guy.
Doing it as the Mayans do actually.
- [Grant] Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
- It's feeling good, dude.
- Normally you'd throw this guy in the ground
and then wonder,
and dig it up and be like,
"Oh, is it ready or not?"
But this is more ChefSteps style.
I'm gonna stick this little thermocouple in there.
That's fireproof. We've got a high temp one.
So I'm gonna bury this guy in here,
and we'll be able to sneak peek
like a little bit of like what's happening
in the pot that way. - Right.
- I love thermometers.
So, we're all packed up.
We could just throw the lid on,
but then you're gonna lose a lot of moisture,
a lot of pressure as this thing gets boiling.
So we're gonna seal it with- - Some masa.
- That's it. We got a giant pot
insulated with a ton of banana leaves.
- [Jonathan] Yep. - We got our marinated
cochinita in there.
We're sealed with some masa,
and we're ready for our fire pit.
So we gotta hulk this thing way down there.
Let's get it. (rousing Latin music)
Little steps. - That's literally the only
step I got, Chef.
- Alright, let's pause it here.
- We've been at this for two days, three days.
Today's day three.
First day, butchery and salted.
- Yep. - Second day,
rocada rojo, marinade.
- Mm-hmm.
- And now we're here ready for the cook-off.
We've got about a hundred people showing up
in about eight hours.
We've built our pit,
we've got our cochinita in our pot
wrapped up in cozy banana leaves.
- Yep. - Sealed with masa.
And now we just have to not F this up.
- That's the biggest thing.
- Let's do this, Jonathan. - Let's get it.
(Grant laughs) - We're doing it.
- I love this like this.
My logic right now is,
we've got all these coals going.
Some of this fresh wetwood
is gonna hold onto that heat on the inside.
You know what I mean? Once we cover it,
it starts to cool down.
This is like a giant
block of ice basically right now.
- Right. Banana leaves. - Banana leaves.
- [Jonathan] You wanna put them over the top.
Just all the way. - Yeah.
- Thanks, thanks, thanks.
- [Grant] Big Mondo over here. - Mondo.
- So we'll keep an eye on it.
We've got like a little mix
of smoke and steam coming here,
which is good.
But I've snuck that little
probe into the center of our pot.
So we'll check it in like,
I don't know, hour and a half, two hours.
We're only gonna have one emergency moment.
It's not gonna get too hot,
but if in two hours we're like,
it's 100 degrees Fahrenheit in that pot,
we're like fucked.
We gotta dig it up and figure it out.
- Figure it out. Yep.
- Take the pressure cookers out.
We'll see. We didn't have enough hot coals.
We're an hour in,
and we've only come up 20 degrees
which isn't enough of a trajectory
to get this thing going.
Here's one option.
Leave the pot, take some of this wood out,
get it burning on the sides again,
stir up those coals,
get 'em breathing, get a fire raging.
- Yeah.
- Or we could take out the pot,
put it back in. (Grant laughs)
- Or we maybe take it out.
- Fuck it. Let's take it out.
- Yeah. (Latin music)
- This is interesting. (blower motor running)
Toasty. Alright, we dug it up.
It was too cold.
We stirred it up, got some air in there.
We're back up to crazy temp.
But we gotta get the pot back in.
This is third best choice right here.
- No, this is, - This is crisis mode.
- This is crisis one.
So this is second best choice.
- Crisis one. So we reset our temperature.
Last time we put the pot in,
we filled it with wood and we covered it.
And what happened is it smothers the fire.
So it just kind of boop,
we lost all of our heat,
because the fire wasn't burning enough.
We didn't store up enough heat energy.
So, unpacked it, got the fire going.
Now we have a fire coming back up.
I'm gonna let it hang out like this
and really heat up.
Before we covered it all,
I wanna check this guy
and make sure it's like ripping boiling.
(Latin music)
- [Jonathan] Here. I do it like that.
- Then when you do it... - Here, throw it in my hand.
That's good. That's good. - Yeah.
- That's good. (Latin music)
You gotta break 'em up so you get like-
- [Grant] Juicy.
- [Jonathan] Juicy, and then they're all like-
- [Grant] Can you go faster? - Self structure. Yeah.
The salsa's really good for the, on the cochinita.
- [Grant] Is that the- - Yeah, the creamy yellow.
Alright, so this salsa's inspired by
a salsa from Mexico City called Guaca Salsa.
Usually they do everything green.
So tomatillo, serrano chiles,
they throw garlic in there.
Sometimes you'll see like blanched cilantro
or raw cilantro, they'll blend it.
And it looks like guacamole blended,
but it doesn't have any avocado.
So the trick is to like caramelize everything in oil,
which is what we did with this one.
Except this one's a white salsa.
This one has onion, habanero, garlic,
some citrus, and it just goes really, really well,
and kind of coats the cochinita pibil,
and has a little bit of all spice
that drives through those warm spices in the cochinita.
(upbeat Latin music)
- Alright, we started our fire
very early this morning.
Probably not early enough.
We got the pot in.
We thought it was hot.
Probably not hot enough.
We've gone in and out,
we've reset some things,
but I think we're in a good place.
Jonathan's pulling it all apart right now.
We gotta get this whole pot out.
We're gonna take a look.
I think at this point,
whether it worked or not,
doesn't really matter
'cause everybody's starting to show up.
Hut. Wee. Dunt, dunt, dunt, dun.
It's got a little char taste on it.
- [Jonathan] Sure. - Like maybe two hot
on the edges. - Yeah.
- But dude, I think we kind of-
- Did we get it?
- I think we totally redeemed ourselves on this one.
- [Jonathan] Is that dumb and dumber?
- Yeah.
- [Jonathan] Oh my God, look at that.
- [Grant] What? The tong test.
- Since you dubbed, it, you get, I get.
- Whoa. Hot!
It's got banana flavor.
I think it's got like charrey banana flavor.
- Charrey banana flavor for sure.
- 'Cause we got a little bit too hot there,
but we got our, we got your amazing marinade flavor.
That's awesome. The pig tastes great.
- Yep. - We got plenty of smoke
from that wood.
- Lots of smoke.
- I think we have everything it takes
to make like an amazing cochinita pibil.
But, we ran into some issues along the way.
But I think we drove it pretty well.
- Yeah. - This is ultimate
cochinita pibil.
- [Grant] It's so tender. - [Jonathan] Look at that.
- I mean- - Whoa.
- [Jonathan] look at that cook, man.
And you got like a million and one textures in there.
I mean, as far as whole hog goes,
this is like one of my favorite preparations
is just to cook it in the pot
with like the marinade and all that.
- [Grant] Let's make some tacos.
- [Jonathan] Let's do it. (Latin music)
- Take your tortillas here. - Oh yeah.
- Dip 'em. - Yep.
- A little bit of the breast.
- It's a stack of 'em. - Yeah, a little stack.
It's two, two per taco.
- Right. But you dunk 'em all.
- [Jonathan] Dunk 'em all.
Then you're gonna bring it to your comal.
Get it going here.
- [Grant] And then it starts to get
nice and supple again.
- [Jonathan] Nice and supple. Yeah.
- Alright, so we're gonna get our tacos built here.
Lots of texture.
Get some pickles on here.
- [Grant] I like how you like pile it on.
- I mean, you know,
if you're gonna have a taco, have a taco.
Alright that, and then some habanero salsa.
I want more.
- Yeah, one more.
- I want what you're having.
- [Grant] Give me a touch of...
You like cilantro? - I like lots of habanero.
- You know like salad.
- [Jonathan] And then the kiss of death.
- [Grant] Ooey gooey. - Let's go, let's do it.
- [Jonathan] The pork is so good, man.
- It is really, really good. - Mm-hmm.
- The habanero salsa too.
It's not too spicy.
It's like you can put a lot.
Is it too spicy for you? (Grant grunts)
No, you're fine.
Being a baby. - Just kidding.
- It's sharp. It's like, I like habaneros.
I don't like tons of the red,
dried chile that sits in your gut.
But the habaneros like spicy just in your mouth.
- Yeah. - And it's light. You know.
- It's got like a pineapple flavor too.
- It's temporary. - Like super tropical.
- Yeah. It's so good, Dude.
- Yeah. - The cilantro, the onions.
- And then the greasy tortilla is like major key.
- Now that I know how to do it,
I'm gonna help you out.
We're gonna start pumping these out for
a bunch of folks coming over.
- Yep. - Let's do it.
- Let's get it. (Latin music)
- Here you go. Jillian, get your butts over here.
(Latin music)
- Mm. - It goes down easier.
Thank you, Buddy. - Mm.
Oh, my God.
- [Speaker] Subscribe to our channel,
and visit chefsteps.com for more tips,
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(champagne bubbling)
(upbeat music)