Tacos al Pastor

Variations

• Gringa: Build it on a flour tortilla with melted cheese, like a quesadilla.
• Vegetarian: Use grilled mushrooms or tofu with the same adobo.
• Salsa verde/roja: Dial the heat with a tomatillo green salsa or a red one.
• Chicken pastor: Swap pork shoulder for chicken thigh for a lighter version.

Tips

• The enzyme in that tip is real, and the recipe below spends a night where the guide writes thirty minutes — which is only safe because of which pineapple it is. What marinades do grants that the enzymes in pineapple, kiwi, pear and fig genuinely cut protein, and then states the catch: "they do not stop." A few hours turns the surface to mush, and unevenly, so parts collapse while parts stay intact. That is why the enzymatic row of its table reads thirty minutes, and why galbijjim uses grated pear in a small quantity for a short time. Step 2 here says "at least 1 hour, ideally overnight." The same guide leaves one door open: "canned pineapple has been heat-treated and its enzymes are dead, so it is useless for this." What goes into the adobo is 3 tablespoons of bought pineapple juice, and juice that has been through heat has nothing left to cut with. The overnight works because the enzyme is already dead, not because it is doing its job well. Squeeze the fresh quarter sitting on the counter into the adobo instead and the thirty-minute row is the one that applies to your recipe.
• Which leaves the sugar as the pineapple's actual contribution here. The fresh fruit is grilled in step 4 and goes on afterwards, so nothing raw ever touches the pork. What is left is the sweetness in the juice, and that is what chars the edges in eight minutes. What sugar does and grilling give the same number — sugar starts to burn around 150°C, so a sweet glaze goes on in thin coats in the last minutes. Here the sweetness is on the meat from the start and goes onto high heat. Teriyaki chicken is the case where the sauce's own water pins the pan near 100°C until it has boiled off; thin slices in a dry pan have no such water. So "sear hard" is a condition rather than a preference: there is no window except the one just short of burning, and the thinness of the slices is what widens it.
• The trompo is a machine for making new surface, and slicing thin is how a pan replaces it. The same guide sets the variable out: if the action stops one to three millimetres in, then what decides how much of the meat a marinade ever reaches is the amount of surface per unit of meat, and that is set with a knife before the marinade is mixed. Char siu writes the arithmetic down and bulgogi takes it to the end — "a 2mm slice has no inside to worry about." A trompo answers the same question with time: the outer few millimetres are shaved off as they brown and a new surface is exposed underneath, so what reaches the taco is always the part the adobo was on, basted the whole while by fat and pineapple running down from above. A home pan has no way to shave, so the knife does that work in advance. Carnitas draws the opposite bet: "both are pork for tacos, but that one is sliced thin, marinated and grilled on a vertical spit; this is cooked in chunks in fat."
• Traditionally cooked on a spinning trompo; at home, sear hard on a pan or grill to mimic the char.
• Pineapple is key — its sweetness and enzymes tenderize the pork and lift the flavor.
• Slice the pork thin so it soaks up the adobo and cooks fast.
• Double up the tortillas so they don't tear — and for that authentic feel.
• A final squeeze of lime brings the whole taco together.