Conchinita pibil: it is amazing what you find when you clean out your freezer(s).

A few weeks back I was watching my favorite channel and one of my favorite chefs and she did a dish she called conchinita pibil, translated it means piglet and buried, basically what we have been doing with our caja china (roasting pig in a box), the same principal/and result; perfectly cooked, yummy pork.  But this method is for smaller portions in a slow cooker, tagine, or in or on the stove. 

Achiote - Annatto seeds, from the achiote tree.

During the cleaning process, I found a pork shoulder, unmarked and knew I had to cook it.  Since we gave David this wonderful 4-in-1 charcoal/gas/smoker/searing grill for father’s Day and his birthday, I was searching for a recipe that would utilize his new toy.  Unfortunately after a few minutes I realized that was not the way it was to be.  Being that I did not want to light up the whole box for just a shoulder, I opted to use the slow cooker (and the stove top method the shoulder was too large for the cooker alone).  And would you know it?  The recipe that showed its face was the conchinita pibil.  So I figured that was the way it was to be cooked.  Never having tried the recipe before, or tasting the result, had I been unsure what to expect.  One required ingredient was achiote paste, a moist ground version of annatto seed.  Unable to locate the paste at the one store I needed to get to that day, I decided to make my own achiote paste from scratch.  And of course readily available on the internet there it was a highly recommended homemade version of achiote paste.  Now I would not recommend this to any one afraid of staining; I think the Mayans used this for red/brown coloring – it stains anything it touches.

So of course the food was good, but the standard needs a little more to be more our taste and the achiote is a strong unusual taste, a bit strong and bitter, but a good compliment to the orange and lime marinade, needs more garlic for sure. 

This experiment of sorts had interesting results.  Both the stove and the slow cooker were on simmer/low.  Both were browned before cooking; end results were that the slow cooker was the more tender of the two.  Can I explain the difference? No, both were covered and untouched until the very end –approximately 4 hours later.  The only other explanation was that the change in stove could be the answer.

This begs another question and another experiment, is this something I can find when cooking other slow cooked items.  Hum, what should the next experiment be??

Happy eating!