If there is one thing we miss about the food in California it would be the tacos. The hubs and I both love tacos from tacos el gordo and of course any authentic Tijuana style taco shop/cart especially the adobada tacos. I mean, it’s something about the flavors of the spicy pork that make our mouths just water!
This Hispanic Heritage Month celebration just wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t get a bite of some delicious adobada tacos… or so the hubs said! I agreed and so we scouted the internet and tried several spice and chile combinations until we settled on one that was fairly close! We adapted the recipe to our liking and here is what we came up with adapted by a recipe found on yahoo ask
Ingredients
– 1 and 1/2 cups Chicken Broth
– 2 lbs of boneless pork chops
– 3 dried Ancho Chiles -cleaned, boiled and deveined*
– 6 dried Guajillo Chiles- cleaned, boiled and deveined*
– 2 cloves
– 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
– 1/2 black pepper
– 2 bay leaves
– 1 teaspoon ground cumin
– 1 teaspoon minced onion
– 1 teaspoon garlic salt
– 1 teaspoon salt
– 1/2 teaspoon oregano
– vegetable oil
– 2 onions- 1 for taco topping and other to use on rod while cooking
-a bunch of cilantro
-Limes
*In at least 6 cups of water boil your chiles or 20 minutes. Remove chiles from water and let them cool.Once cool, clean chiles by removing stem and seeds.
Tools:
A Convection oven with rotisserie option would be best because traditionally carne adobada in taco shops and carts is cooked in a vertical rotisserie! Horizontal works great too!
Directions:
1- Blend chiles, vinegar, chicken stock and all dry ingredients except bay leaves. Blend until all is liquid.
2- Pile pork into a resealable dish and pour marinate over a colander to retain any pulp. If you have a lot of pork layer it in to your dish alternating pork and marinate. Place the bay leaves in with with pork and the remainder of the liquid.
3- Seal and marinate overnight or for at least 12 hours in the refrigerator.
4- Cut an onion in half and use one half for the bottom of the Rotisserie rod and begin to pile meat from dish removed from refrigeration. Top it off with the remaining half of onion.
Rotisserie convention oven cooking
5- Set your Convention oven to Rotisserie and cook at 350F degrees for approximately 2.5 hours. Temperatures may vary so keep a close eye. Once your meat gets a crisp you can remove from heat.
6- Cut the meat off your rod and place meat strips straight into a pan with a little oil I’d say a tablespoon at a time. We used vegetable oil and just enough to coat the bottom of our pan. This will allow the pork to get crisp just like with a taquero plus helps with reheating keeping the cooked meat crunch and flavorful. Cook for about 5 minutes just enough to get the crunch but be careful not to dry out your meat.
TIP: Store your meat in an airtight container for later use during the week. Consider it a make a head meal. Reheating is super easy!
7- Chop the meat to smaller strips or cubes and serve on a warm corn tortilla. Top with cilantro, onion, some lime juice!
Listos! Don’t forget the salsa if you love a great spicy taco!
what if dont have a rotisserie? how can I achieve similiar results
Hi Stacy Great question! You can also cook in the oven. You’d need to add your marinated meat to a skewer and place it in a oven safe dish preferably a loaf pan or anything similar that can keep the meat standing and the juices in. You will need to rotate the meat every 15 to 20 mins to get the nice crunch. We then recommend removing the meat from the oven once it’s cooked on all sides. We also would chop up the meat and cook thoroughly on the stove in a pan with some of the juices from baking. This will give you similar results to cooking it in the rotisserie oven. Good luck!
I slow cooked the meat and used a hamburger holder the wire rack kind layered the meat in that slow cooked in the oven for 4 hours 250 and fished it off on the grill then I shredded the pork. it was good. I also used pineapple because that was what I saw them cook with their meat .