Adobo Pork

The East Point Gentleman's Tasting Club visits my humble abode tonight, and to honor the gents I am preparing a taco night. The menu includes grilled corn on the cob (soaked, grilled in husks, and then charred), brothy black beans with green chilies, onion, and oregano, and local tortillas. As it turns out, we have quite a few local tortilla factories, and I have purchased both flour and corn tortillas for the occasion.

To fill the tacos, I have adobo pork and cilantro-lime-green chili shrimp. For toppings, I have queso fresca, chopped cilantro, diced onions, and diced tomatoes. I'll restrict this post to the adobo pork and hopefully will post about the rest of the meal tomorrow.

Making the Adobo Paste

The adobo sauce came out of the bon appetit magazine this month, and I addressed this in a previous blog entry. The recipe actually called for shrimp, but it is the kind of sauce that can go with any protein. After making the paste on Thursday, I wrung my hands and decided that the shrimp would have to be addressed differently. Adobo paste, like anything else made from dried chilies, is extraordinarily astringent. I believe it works better when fat can blend with it and smooth it out.

Making the adobo paste required a little improvising. First of all, I fire roasted the ancho peppers. Fire roasting is a superior means of toasting the chilies, if only because of the smoke that they absorb from the fire. It makes them far more fragrant. Once roasted, I transferred th charred chilies to the bowl and added the water. The recipe did not call for enough cooking liquid, so I had to add water, and still ended up with a pretty thick paste. I then had to adjust ingredients accordingly to create the right flavor--an earthy, smoky adobo sauce. I basted in the sauce, poked holes in it with a bamboo skewer, and let it marinate for about eight hours.

Then I smoked the pork shoulder. It sat in the smoker for two hours with cherrywood before I wrapped it in foil and let it cook overnight. The egg held its temperature all the way through the night, dropping only from 240 to 220. I let it cook for twelve hours total (eight pound picnic shoulder), rebasting it only once.

Pulling the Pork

Then I pulled it, let it sit, and dumped it into a dutch oven with a little more paste, where I let it slowly cook at low heat on the simmer burner for about an hour. The idea is to get the flavors to meld together and the fat to mellow out the adobo. I've let it sit all afternoon and will fire it up before everyone comes just to keep it hot and mix the flavors one last time.