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I love Tacos al pastor but have never made them myself. They are a popular street food here in SoCal and Mexico and I finally decided to try my hand at making some. Forgive me as this is a long one. I started out by thawing a Pork Butt I had in the freezer that I had purchased on sale for $.99 a lb. (7.93 lbs.) I unwrapped it and found there was still some ice crystals on it. (which is what I was hoping for to make cutting it easier) I cut it in half and deboned the other half. I proceeded to cut it all up into approximately 3/8” slices. I placed this into a large container, covered it and placed it into the fridge. I now gathered up the ingredients for the al pastor marinade. Here’s the recipe I used. (It’s a combination of several recipes I watched on YouTube) Not shown in the picture are the pineapple juice and the vinegar. 8 lb bone-in pork shoulder (deboned) 4 tablespoons achiote paste (I used 1 – 3.5 oz. brick) 2 guajillo peppers (seeded and re-hydrated) 2 ancho peppers (seeded and re-hydrated) 3 Chipotle peppers + all the adobo sauce from 1 - 7 oz. can 5 garlic cloves ¼ small white or yellow onion 1 oz. Piloncillo (substitute brown sugar if you can find it) 1 tbsp. dried oregano (preferably Mexican) 1 tbsp. cumin 1 tbsp. salt 1 tbsp. pepper 1 tsp. cinnamon (preferably Mexican) 1 tsp, cloves ½ cup pineapple juice ½ cup white vinegar ¼ cup OO ¼ cup of the water from re-hydrating the peppers ¼ cup orange juice ¼ cup lime juice 1 pineapple, skinned and sliced into 1-inch (2 cm) rounds (for the spit/trompo) (Note: I only had some small guajillo chiles so I used 6 of them) Everybody went into the pool for a spin. I poured some marinade into the bottom of a very large bowl and then some pork slices. I repeated this process until all the pork was in the bowl and pour the rest of the marinade over the top. I then stirred it until everything had a nice coating. Now how will I cook this? Tacos al pastor is a dish developed in central Mexico that is based on shawarma spit grilled meat brought by Lebanese immigrants. It is traditionally cooked on a vertical spit known as a trompo. I don’t have such an exotic grill, so I had to improvise. I had found this indoor grill plate at a local thrift store for $2.17 and used it to create a vertical spit. I now peeled and sliced up the pineapple And started my vertical trompo stack adding a slice of pineapple and red onion after every 6 or 7 layers of meat. I place the stack in the center of my weber redhead with coals all around it. I then setup my craving station. Here it is after approximately 30 minutes. After approximately 75 minutes I removed the trompo and craved off the outer charred layer. (The char is an important part of the taste profile) I then placed the trompo back in the redhead to char the outside again. So pretty! I then repeated the process another 3 times. After I had trimmed off the outside 3 times I set up my taco cart errrr bar and started to assemble my street taco plate. Oh Yum! Here it is served up with a Modelo Especial. This was a little on the spicy side but oh so delicious! Thanks for looking.

Well done. Next time don't make so easy! Ben in N.C

Same here Scrap, pretty interested but the price going up isn’t favorable. I am pretty cautious with Kickstarter/Indiegogo as just like happened with the Cinder because of bankruptcy it can end up becoming vaporware. Which then later Desora bought them and filled the orders. I have read reviews the app side was still getting worked out (like anywhere near accurate cook time predictions and disconnects.) Those may have been worked out or not as it hasn’t had an update in over a year (iOS). That is the other thing you see often is that a piece of tech that gets a lot if it’s added features from an app that no longer has app support. So I was just waiting to buy till the product/company behind it got what seemed somewhat stable. Also as I asked John (but he may not have spotted the post) I am wondering if it is just a one trick steak pony as that is mostly what gets reviewed. I am also curious how is fares with burgers, chicken etc.

I've been planning a Shawarma cook and couldn't come up with a cost-effective way to spin the meat in front of the fire until a trip into the wilds of Wally World turned up a 13" pizza pan for 88 cents. That combined with the fact a Akorn owner posted on Amazon months ago that the charcoal grate for a 22" Weber is 17" and is an exact fit for the tabs inside the Akorn (what a coincidence). Puts your fire 4" below the cooking surface and lets you do true 2 zone cooks and turns a pizza pan, a tomato can and one of Steven Raichlen's kebab skewers into a stationary rotisserie. Combined a Lebanese beef and lamb Shawarma recipe with a Jerusalem lamb Shawarma recipe and was pretty happy with the result. In what I thought was about to be a "Soup Nazi" moment a local expert advised me that I didn't want any kind of wrap, but shawarma over garlic fries. Took that advice in the restaurant and for the cook. French fries were blanched at 325, let rest in a paper bag then fried at 370 until crisp and dunked in a garlic/butter mixture then S & P and plate with some cuke, tomato red onion and cilantro. Marinated beef and lamb was stacked on the skewer and cooked at 325 degrees to an internal temp of 140 using my Akorn and Digi-Q. And the fire was lit at the exact time of the peak of the solar eclipse.