hello this is chef john from food wishes calm with plastered pork tacos that's
right i was in the mood for some pork tacos but i was looking for a little bit
of a change of pace to the normal carnita style i would usually make which
led to this wild and crazy experiment and while i was very happy with the
results and the tacos really were delicious especially with the apple and
jalapeno salsa I'm going to show you how to make it was also one of the most
bizarre things I've ever seen come out of my oven and actually believe it or
not look like a famous historical figure or should I say disfigure but anyway
you'll see what I mean in a few minutes and to get started the first thing we're
gonna do is season up a nice big pork shoulder roast which as you can see his
bone in an in case you're keeping score at home that's the shoulder blade and
the first thing I did here was cover this very generously with some freshly
and finely minced rosemary which is not only lovely with pork but I thought
would pair very well with the apples in the salsa later and then once my pork
shoulder was Rose married I went ahead and cover that with freshly ground black
pepper and while you can use pretty much any herbs and spices you want here the
only thing I don't want you seasoning this with would be salt since we're
gonna put a ton of that in the plaster that's gonna cover this which by the way
is the next step and for that we'll take some all-purpose flour and add to de
tremendous amount of kosher salt and yes that is a ridiculous amount but we're
not gonna eat the plaster we are just using it to hopefully trap in the
moisture and flavor and perfectly season the pork as it roasts and then to that
we will add one egg white and then finish up with a splash of cold fresh
water at which point we'll give this a very enthusiastic stirring until we have
something very smooth and Lum free and since this was an experiment I wasn't
exactly sure how thick I wanted this okay I didn't really want to end up with
a dough but I also didn't want a super runny otherwise it just might drip off
the meat as it cooked and so what I ended up with after a few minutes of
stirring was something that look like this which I guess kind of looks like
plaster although to be honest I'm not sure I've ever seen wet plaster but
anyway once that was mixed I went ahead and plop my pork in and then use my
spoon to spread that all over and when I first started doing this I
was thinking I would just add all the herbs and spices to this mixture but the
more I thought about it that didn't seem like a great idea since as I mentioned
we're not actually gonna eat the plaster and I was afraid a lot of that flavor
will get trapped in the crust and basically wasted and I was thinking with
this method this plaster coating would harden as it baked and trap all that
goodness against the meat but anyway once I had that covered I went ahead and
spread some of the excess into the bottom of my roasting pan which probably
didn't really do much but at the time felt like something I should do
and then I went ahead and placed my pork on top and then I made sure I reapplied
some to any of those spots that got rubbed off during the transfer and then
once I was sure was covered i spooned even more over the top and then once I
had that pork as plastered as I was I proceeded to place it into the center of
a 325 degree oven for about three and a half hours or until it looked like the
Elephant Man so that just might be the strangest thing I've ever pulled out of
my oven I mean just absolutely horrifying although the other side did
look relatively normal and kind of sorta like plaster pork and that surface had
become quite dry and hard check it out oh yeah pork don't lie although maybe
sometimes it should and if you weren't gonna cut this up and make tacos later
you could just crack this crust off at the table and go ahead and slice up and
serve what would hopefully be a very flavorful roast pork but anyway that
wasn't my plan so I let this cool down for about an hour at which point I
became uncrackable okay because it absorbed a lot of moisture became sort
of leathery so basically I just had to slice it and peel it off and at this
point I was really looking forward to tasting a piece to see how it came out
in fact I was so anxious and in a hurry I was not really paying attention and I
sliced right into that shoulder blade which will explain that beautiful piece
of cartilage you see but you know what I got over my fear of eating around
cartilage a long time ago so I tucked in anyway and that really was some fabulous
meat okay like all saldo crusts I was hoping this would trap in a lot of
moisture and flavor and I think that's exactly what happened
in L in case you're wondering it was not too salty it was absolutely perfect and
then because I wanted to cube this up for the tacos I decided to break it up
into his larger chunks as I could although fair warning around the
shoulder blade there are gonna be little pockets of meat that are just gonna be
small because they're small and if you're gonna have a few more samples
that's the spot you want to get him from but anyway I went ahead and broke the
outer part mostly leaving in nice big chunks so that once this is chilled
they're easy to Cuba all right if you want shredded pork tacos go ahead but I
wanted cubes this time and once I had all that meat on the plate I noticed
some very delicious looking brown goo in the bottom of the pan that I figured I
should spoon and spread over since technically those are accumulated juices
which of course we never throw away and you can definitely use this right away
if you want but it was getting dark so I decided to wrap it up with some of those
bigger plaster pieces placed over the top and then I pop that in the fridge
and went to bed dreaming of the tacos I would be enjoying the next day and then
at some point before we actually build our tacos we're gonna want to put
together this very special salsa which will include some Honey Crisp apple that
we've cut into a nice small dice and then to that we will add some finely
diced white onion as well as some seeded diced jalapeno I also tossed in some
freshly chopped cilantro as well as a nice big pinch of salt plus the juice of
one lime that as you can see I freshly squeezed by hand and then I finished up
with a little pinch of cayenne just to stay in shape and that's it we'll take a
spoon and give that a mix and of course give it a taste and adjust if need be
and that really was so delicious it could have been a video all by itself
but it's not it's gonna go on some pork tacos so I grabbed a chunk of what was
now very cold pork and I sliced that up and then cut it in strips and then into
about half inch cubes and like I said if you wanted to shred this or chop it up
even smaller go ahead but I was in the mood for cubes which after cutting I
went ahead and browned up in a dry non-stick pan over medium-high heat and
yes you heard that correctly a dry pan okay pork shoulder has a fair amount of
fat in it and as that heats up it melts you'll see this will Brown up nicely of
having said that if you want to fry this up in a whole bunch of fat sort of
carnitas style if it's the reserved fat you say from the pan that would also be
perfectly fine and absolutely incredible but as I said earlier I was kind of
going for a little bit of a change of pace for my usual carnitas method but
either way is fantastic so you decide I mean you are after all the joseph
merrick of how to prepare it and once I had that nicely browned I went ahead and
transfer that on to a homemade flour tortilla which was actually half white
half wheat flour and after piling on a very generous amount I went ahead and
spooned over that absolutely incredible Apple help and yo salsa and that my
friends was one of the best pork tacos I've had in a very very long time okay
even though it looked absolutely bizarre that plastered pork method really did
produce a tender juicy flavorful meat and we could have seasoned that with
anything and these tacos would be amazing but because this meat is subtly
scented with rosemary and black pepper it works incredibly well with this sweet
and slightly spicy jalapeno apple salsa so I really did enjoy every bite of this
and how much different with these tacos have been if we had just roasted the
pork using a traditional method I don't know okay those questions are really
hard to answer although it has been my experience that meats roasted in a salt
crust or a salt dough usually do come out fairly succulent plus if you did use
a traditional method for the pork there is no way it's going to come out of the
oven looking like the Elephant Man which is why especially if you make this salsa
also I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links
below for the ingredients a principle written recipe and much more info as
usual and as always
you