Narrator: Rosalía Chay can spend 30 minutes
grinding fresh ingredients to make
a traditional Maya pork dish called cochinita pibil.
She's one of the few chefs in Mexico who still cooks
using one of the oldest forms of barbecue in the world,
an underground oven called a pib.
Maya people have prepared meals this way
since at least 400 AD.
But people have abandoned these cooking traditions,
swapping pibs for modern stoves,
fresh ingredients for prepackaged sauces,
and manual stone grinders for blenders.
Narrator: So what does it take
to preserve an ancient cuisine?
And can Rosalía convince others to do the same?
We went to Mexico to see how the process
of making this Maya dish is still standing.
Maya people arrived in the Yucatan Peninsula
around 2500 BC.
By 250 AD, they had
one of the most advanced civilizations in Mesoamerica.
They were sophisticated farmers
who used astronomy and calendars to guide their harvests.
Many of their more than 40 cities
featured massive buildings and temples made with stones.
Today, the cities are in ruins.
But over 1 million Maya people still live in the Yucatan,
often in small towns near the historic sites.
Rosalía lives in one
of the group's oldest settlements in Mexico, Yaxuna.
She grows some of the most important ingredients
for her cochinita pibil in her backyard.
Narrator: Achiote seeds are what give the dish
its reddish-orange color and slight peppery flavor.
Maya people used it as food coloring, body paint,
and even lipstick in ancient times.
Rosalía grinds all the ingredients
to make the recado, or achiote paste.
She uses an ancient tool called a metate,
or ka' in the Yucatec Mayan language.
The recipe takes six different spices,
and she measures everything by hand,
as her mother taught her when she was a child.
Narrator: Rosalía finishes the marinade
with juice from a Seville orange,
a fruit that grows throughout the Yucatan.
It's more sour than limes and adds acidity.
Narrator: She massages the paste into the meat
before adding it into a large metal pot.
Narrator: In the Maya community,
making cochinita pibil is a family affair.
It's traditionally made for celebrations,
like weddings and birthdays.
As the women marinate the meat,
men prepare the underground oven called a pib.
Rosalía's son starts a fire with wood from two native trees,
the jabín and the kitinché.
They burn slowly and can withstand the high temperatures.
He adds large rocks on top.
These hold heat even after the fire goes out.
It takes two hours for the oven to be ready.
When it's time to add the pots,
Rosalía makes sure to place them between the hot rocks
to ensure the pork cooks from all sides.
Her son covers the pib with more wood and banana trunks
to stop debris from getting into the pots.
He adds heat-resistant bags and soil.
The pork cooks for three hours.
The inside of the pib can reach up to 200 degrees Celsius.
Outside the Yucatan Peninsula,
conventional stoves and ovens
have replaced the long process of pib cooking.
But Rosalía says the flavor is worth the wait.
Narrator: She raises her own Creole hairless pigs
and keeps them on a strict diet of corn
and ramon tree leaves.
Narrator: The Maya made the earliest version
of cochinita pibil with venison or wild boar.
In the 16th century,
Spaniards invading the Yucatan
brought with them pigs and sour oranges,
which quickly became staples of the dish.
But their conquest also devastated
Indigenous communities there.
An estimated 1.5 million Maya had died
from disease and warfare by 1600,
and the Spanish burned Maya religious books
in an effort to force them into Christianity.
Preparing traditional dishes like cochinita pibil
was a way for Maya who survived
to keep their heritage alive.
It's one of the reasons Rosalía believes
it's so important to share with others.
In 2008, she opened her kitchen
to chefs visiting the Yucatan.
Corn is the basis of Maya cooking.
In the Yucatan,
people eat it daily in many forms.
And it's the only ingredient in Rosalía's tortillas.
Narrator: Soaking the corn cobs in lime water overnight
helps to soften them.
They wash them with fresh water for 20 minutes
before bringing them to the mill for grinding.
This used to be done completely by hand,
but with the mill, she can do it three times as fast.
She's been making tortillas since she was 8 years old.
Narrator: Today, her daughter-in-law Ana
helps her make them.
She puts the dough on a griddle called a comal
and flips several times until they are lightly toasted.
She places them near the fire
so they inflate and become more pliable.
Narrator: Rosalía's sons dig the pots out of the pib
once the cochinita is ready.
The pots are extremely hot,
so they have to be careful when removing them.
Then the cochinita pibil is ready to serve.
The pork is typically served in tacos
and topped with pickled red onions.
It's become the most famous dish of the Yucatan,
with many restaurants in the region serving it.
But the way it's made today
is far from what Rosalía's ancestors' techniques were.
Tortillas are now widely mass-produced,
and premade achiote paste can be found
in grocery stores across Mexico.
Narrator: Rosalía enjoys cooking
other traditional dishes too, like relleno negro,
a turkey stew typically made
to celebrate the Day of the Dead.
Narrator: But she says Maya traditions
have been abandoned over the years.
Narrator: Even their language has become less popular.
Only about a quarter of Maya people in the Yucatan
still speak their native tongue.
Narrator: Rosalía has been trying to pass her traditions
onto her kids, but they're busy with school.
Narrator: And at first,
only chefs and a handful of curious tourists
would visit Rosalía to taste her food.
But everything changed when she was featured
on the Netflix show "Chef's Table: BBQ" in 2020.
Narrator: She started hosting cooking demonstrations
at her home the same year.
Now, she has up to 60 people coming in every week.
We leave it there burning for around one and a half hours,
two hours, until we have only the embers.
Shaylon: I learned that good food takes time,
and being obsessed with good ingredients
and doing things the traditional way,
the results pay off in the end.
Narrator: For Rosalía,
making these dishes represents the beauty of her heritage
and a way to share it with the world.
Narrator: She hopes the next generation
will fall in love with cooking the way she has.
But for now,
she's proud of doing her part to keep Maya traditions alive.