Al Pastor seasoning is a street food classic that fuses flavors and techniques from Middle Eastern Shawarma with local flavors and ingredients in Mexico. Lebanese settlers in Mexico have created what has become one of the most iconic taco styles of all time! We bring you the flavor profile of this famous cuisine along with a recipe to make Al Pastor at home.
Rae & Ryan’s is proud to provide an Al Pastor seasoning blend that is both true to modern flavors and the heritage that brought it to bear. This seasoning combines the mild but flavorful chilis, herbs, and fresh pineapple indigenous to Mexico with the pungent and powerful Middle Eastern spices like Cinnamon, Clove, and Black Pepper.
Al Pastor is traditionally cooked on a vertical spit, rotisserie-style, with the outside being shaved down to order. The average home cook does not have access to this cooking method, but you can grill up some marinated pork shoulder over charcoal and, with this seasoning used as a marinade, you can achieve nearly the same results!
See the recipe tab above for how to use this seasoning!
All of our products come vacuum sealed in a non-reactive and food safe Mylar bag with a tamper-evident and heat-sealed tear-away strip. The Mylar bag features a reusable zipper closure for ease of use and storage which eliminates needing to transfer the product to another container. These bags are light, oxygen, and odor-blocking for maximum protection from environmental factors that cause oxidation and rapid aging of volatile oils and flavor compounds. All of our products are sealed in these Mylar bags the day they are batched to ensure the best preservation of freshness and quality possible. Each product will also contain a 3-gram silica gel Tyvek desiccant packet to help absorb any moisture and oxygen in the bag over the course of its use. The desiccant packets are FDA approved as pharmaceutical/food grade and 100% non-toxic. We strongly encourage you to press all air out of the bag after each use before zipping close and to store bags in a cool place away from direct sunlight or any heat sources, such as an oven or microwave.
-This is what we believe in, it’s why we are here-
In this industry, all the big players in the market have to produce at such large volumes in order to be able to anticipate the demand of the market that product is often stockpiled and sitting around waiting for distribution. “It’ll always be available and it’s always on the shelf” is something you can count on. The downside is that when you go shopping and buy a jar of seasoning from any major brand in a grocery store the odds are very high that the product you picked up was produced a long, long time ago in a factory far away.
I think we can all relate to what an old can of coffee grounds or a week old bottle of wine tastes like after it has been sitting around too long. It may have been good, even great, once… but time ages everyone and everything, sometimes for better, but usually for worse.
Quality and Freshness are the primary goals that we at Rae&Ryan’s Gourmet Foods are looking to excel at, well besides creating new and unique flavors that will knock your socks off! We do not subscribe to the concept of compromising quality for the gains of quantity. We are not trying to make the fastest buck possible and get out before it all falls apart. We are working every day to create a brand you can trust and rely on to be the best and never compromise.
That sounds good and well, but what does that actually mean you say? Well that means that we are as close to the source of the ingredients as possible so we know how old they are. A select few ingredients we grow ourselves here at the homestead and it doesn’t get fresher than that. The rest we source fresh/raw and organic as much as possible which gets processed and dried on site. The ingredients we can’t grow or source fresh we source already dried from only the highest of high quality suppliers who also believe in our philosophy of quality over quantity.
What this means for you as the consumer is that you are guaranteed to receive product that was produced within the last month or less, often less. Some of our less common products or large volume orders are made to order and shipped within three days. When you open a vacuum sealed pouch of seasoning from Rae&Ryan’s your nose will know that what you hold in your hand has not been sitting in a hot factory, a flatbed truck or some lonely shelf for months or years. Your taste buds will confirm that what you have is the freshest and most potent seasoning available, short of going to your Grandma’s house.
Stale and bland food doesn’t make any more sense than carrying a dull pocket knife or walking around with your shoelaces untied. I think we can all agree that:
Mix 1 oz by weight, or a rounded 1/4 cup by volume, of Al Pastor Seasoning with 1 Cup of canned pineapple juice* and 3/4 Cup Apple cider or White Vinegar, and a 1/4 Cup of water. 1 Can of pineapple chunks in juice, not heavy syrup, will yield the right amount of juice for this recipe. Allow the marinade to sit for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, before adding to your meat.
Meat
2 pounds of Boneless Pork Shoulder, or a Boston Butt roast, with a decent fat cap is best for this recipe. You want to slice the meat thinly and evenly, about a 1/4″ thick. You don’t want it too thin that it’ll burn on the grill or so thick that the inside doesn’t cook evenly with the outside. It is easiest to get a uniform cut if you place the shoulder roast in the freezer for 30 minutes before slicing.
Prep
Place the meat in a gallon ziplock bag, add the marinade, and seal closed with as much air removed as possible. Double bag your marinade and give it a good massage to work in the marinade. Place in the fridge for up to 24 hours, but at least 6, and massage the bag every few hours. This is as simple as just giving the bag a good massage every time you go to the fridge for something, doesn’t have to be any specific interval.
Cook
When ready to cook set the meat on the counter to come up to room temperature. You can grill this on a gas or charcoal grill. Our personal preference is charcoal for the extra flavor that this method provides. Cook the meat hot and fast just like you would Carne Asada or steak.
The remaining marinade left in the bag after placing the meat on the grill is still useful! You can place that marinade in a saucepan and bring up to a boil and then use it at the end.
Any and all marinade that has been in contact with raw meat MUST ALWAYS be cooked thoroughly by bringing up to a boil. Raw marinade is never safe to use without cooking!
If you are not comfortable reusing the marinade then you can make some extra marinade to use when you cook the meat, or reserve some and not place it all on the meat initially.
When you are ready to cook remove the pork from the bag to a bowl that will be easy to use around the grill and reserve and cook the marinade left in the bag. As you place the pork on the grill there will be some marinade left in the bowl. I use this to dunk the pork in before flipping them to cook the second side. This should use up what bit was left in the bowl and help keep your meat moist.
Whether you chose a can of pineapple rings or chunks, the pineapple needs to be chopped down to mix evenly with the pork.
Final Touches
Once the pork is finished cooking, chop it up smaller than bitesize so it is easy to fill in a tortilla, fold in the chopped pineapple, and pour in the reserved, and COOKED, marinade and stir thoroughly. We like to melt a little cheese on our corn tortillas before adding the meat and pineapple mixture, but you can load your taco any way you want. This style of taco is best done simply with fresh guacamole and pico de gallo salsa. It is not a very spicy mix so you can kick up your salsa or use a hot sauce to taste.
*Do not use fresh pineapple juice to marinate with as it will negatively change the texture of the meat due to the active enzymes in fresh juice.*
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