
This will take a different amount of time for each ingredients, depending on the heat and placement on the grill, but about 12 to 15 minutes.Ĭhop the pork, onion and pineapple together, all at once (preferably with a cleaver) to fuse the flavors. The onion will have grill marks and start to become translucent. The pineapple is done when the rounds have char lines but not so cooked that they fold over on themselves when flipped. Turn the meat, pineapple and onion every few minutes. Remove the meat from the refrigerator, and grill the pork, the pineapple slices and the sliced onion until the meat is browned on the outside and firm (the color is hard to judge because of the marinade). Be sure the grill is clean so that the meat does not stick. Thirty minutes before cooking, prepare a direct-heat fire in your grill at medium heat. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 12 hours. Pour the pineapple mixture over the meat. Blend until smooth.Īrrange the pork in a large, nonreactive dish or casserole. Both traditionally use lamb meat, hence the name, but in Mexico and South America al pastor is made with juicy pork.ġ pineapple, 1/2 cored and diced, 1/2 sliced into rounds 3/4-inch thickġ yellow onion, 1/2 roughly chopped, 1/2 sliced into rounds 3/4-inch thickġ cup fresh Mexican or Valencia orange juice (about 3 to 4 oranges)ġ (5-pound) pork shoulder, cut into steak-size (5-by-3-inch) pieces, 3/4-inch thickĬhopped fresh cilantro, lemon wedges, sliced jalapeño pepper and salsa of your choice, for servingĬombine the diced pineapple, tomatoes, chopped onion, orange juice, all the chilies, garlic, cumin, oregano and salt in a blender. Lebanese immigrants brought the shawarma-style to Mexico, and in Greece you will find a similar recipe in a gyro. The recipe has its roots in trompo, which is the meat you see being sliced from a rotating vertical skewer. It’s a perfect dish for feeding a family or a crowd this summer, especially if you like to cook over live fire.Īl pastor (“the shepherd”) is one of the most recognized street tacos in the Americas. Some of those new recipes made it into his cookbook “ Cowboy Barbecue: Fire & Smoke from the Original Texas Vaqueros” (Countryman Press, $24.95), which came out last month, but so did plenty of the traditional dishes, including his tacos al pastor. In recent years, Davila has added a food truck to the business -“my food lab,” he calls it - where he can experiment with flavors beyond the Mexican-American sausages, briskets, rubs and sauces that are always on the menu at the old-school restaurant in the town northeast of San Antonio, which has been serving hundreds of customers a day for decades. His grandfather got into the barbecue business in the 1950s, and his family has been in Texas for longer than it’s been a state.

He has developed regulars throughout the Bay Area, and while he can’t make frequent trips to other cities anymore, he hopes that his fans in areas like Oakland, San Jose, and the Peninsula will think of eating at Al Pastor Papi before they go to a Giants or Warriors game or concert at Chase Center.Adrian Davila is the third-generation pitmaster at Davila’s BBQ in Seguin. “I think a lot of the Bay Area’s frustration with me is that I’m not always open and I am always moving around,” he notes, excited that this will change. Up until this point, Al Pastor Papi has announced a constantly changing schedule on Instagram, and he thinks having a set destination seven days a week will be a comfort to people who don’t like to hunt so much for something they really want to try. “We’ve grown as much as one truck moving around can grow.” “It was really cool to be able to move around and reach out to the people,” Escobedo says. And as his business strengthens by rooting at SPARK, he’ll continue to draw awareness and funds for organizations he works closely with, including Hijas del Campo in Contra Costa, which supports migrant essential workers.
AL PASTOR TACO TRUCK FREE
His mobility was an asset to the Bay Area at large during the pandemic, when he served free meals and hosted donation drives for farmworkers and senior communities.


He’ll continue to explore adding a second truck or a restaurant space in the future, and he revealed that he’s looking into other brick and mortar concepts with partners.Įscobedo has long been a community-first activist raising money and supplies for those in need in California and beyond.

The permanent space allows Escobedo the chance to rest from being constantly on the road and to grow his in-person and delivery operations, eventually including office and event catering expansion.
