Tacos al Pastor, sans Trompo

Botch

Tacos al Pastor are made from thinly sliced/pounded pork, marinated in a chile sauce, then stacked up on a vertical spit or trompo, and slowly rotated in front of a hot fire.  As orders come in the outside of the stack of meat is shaved into a taco, giving the meal both charred bits of pork along with juicy, just-done pork.  Fun to see it in person, but impractical for making at home, especially for just 1-2 people:
 

 
Enter Rick Bayless.  He came up with a simple method of imitating it at home: the trick is to lay the marinated sheet of pork flat on the grill over a very hot fire, but then don't flip it!   The bottom eventually chars, and when the top is cooked you're done (not so easy to see with that deep red marinade).  
Instead of making my usual chile sauce from powdered chiles, I made it from the dried pods as my Commissary just started carrying them.  Seven guajillo chiles, 3 anchos and 3 de Arbols are my usual mix.  They're stemmed, seeded, cut along the side to lay flat, then toasted in a dry CI pan.  
 

 

 
The color, and the aroma, change quickly and are pretty dramatic:
 

 
The toasted chiles are cut into pieces and soaked in the blender jar with hot water to cover for 20 minutes or so, then add roasted garlic, vinegar, black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, salt and a half-block of achiote paste.  The box I purchased said "achiote", but it was 8 small envelopes of MSG, salt, and a couple spices for color mostly; threw two of them in since I had them.  Blended up, poured thru a sieve (which I didn't need to do, my new lifetime KitchenAid blender did just as good a job as my old lifetime KA blender, which died and I couldn't get a touchpad for it).  
 
Then, Assembly Line Time.  I sliced a large pork roast into about 3/8" slices, pounded each one as thin as they'd go, paint both sides with the chile sauce, and marinate overnight.  Froze most of them, so I'm ready to go when I want pork tacos, and one slice was just enough for 3 tacos, my usual serving.
 

 
Rick's recipe included a morita, roasted tomatillo and garlic salsa, made that and it was great.  He also included a relish of raw white onion and cilantro.  He says Mexican cooks almost exclusively use white onions, and to rinse them after chopping.  I love raw onion but usually blow up like a balloon when I eat them, thought I'd try it with the white and rinsing technique; so far so good.  
 
TaP also include grilled pineapple; I usually don't like fruit on my protein but grilled up a couple slices just to be authentic.
 

 
(grilled an onion slice in case the raw onion didn't work)  
 

 
Think I lucked out on the charred bottom/juicy top, pork was good.  Final TaPs were nothing to look at, but delicious and will be doing them again (I can do without the pineapple, but made enough for tacos for two more days.
 

 
The chile sauce was rather labor-intensive but I ended up with about a pint left over; it keeps well and is great brushed on grilled chicken, fish in banana leaves, or Texas chili.   Thanks for looking (and Thanks @HannahGreeneEgg for apparently fixing our photo issue, these all loaded without a hitch!)  

zaphod

wow! great post and a heck of an impressive cook. thanks @Botch

GrateEggspectations

Beautiful, Botch. Really enjoyed the photos and detailed documentation. After reading that, I am hungry!

Buckwoody Egger

botch you are bringin it this week!! 

Canugghead

Very creative and great pictorial. Honestly though, I thought you were going to do this 😂 

lousubcap

@Botch- that is a documentation and banquet worthy effort right there.  Exceptional detail and great eats at the outset. Nailed the entire process.
https://youtu.be/b2_vbou3kxE

bluebird66

Great job!