Thread: Mexican Food in Thailand, Roll Your own Carnitas

There's been a few pleas for good Mexican food in Thailand. Restaurants just don't get it. Good down-home Mexican food begins in the home. Mexican food ai't allthat hard to make in Thailand. most of the ingredients are commonplace in Thai cuisine. You just assemble them a bit differently.

I've been postin recipes on this forum for a while now and usually set the pic size to 600px width. Y'all gonna have to get used to a slightly larger size. New modern monitors for dead cheap y'all should be able to handle a 800px wide pics with no problem.

Carnitas. Slow, steam roasted, pulled and re roasted pork is one of hte most satisfying meals a poor boy can make for hisself. Pork is dead cheap. I picked up this three kilo chunk of pig's ass for a song inthe local market before they cut it up into unrecognizable pieces.



That's three kilo of Pork round or ham with the bone removed. Very little fat but enough for what we want to do.
The night before the big event I built a rub of Cumin, Black/white pepper, dried & ground chilies and salt looked like this:



And I massaged it into the meat like this:


Afer making sure I had good coverage of he meat I stuck in the fridge to rest over night and it looked like this:


I had invited several folks oer and expected them 'bout 18:30 or so, so I had to get up kinda early (noon[ish]) and get the roast going. Carnitas takes time. There are as many recipes for carnits as there are folks that actually cook it. Some call for a long slow boil in broth; then shred and roast the pork, some folks just deep fry the whole roast in a similar manner you would a whole turkey, shread and eat.
Fuckin friscofrankie is gonna show you the real god-damn deal here folks. you plop that biggO roast in a deep roasting pan quarter an onion or two fill the pot up with fresh clean water and stick it in a low & slow oven. Shoot for 120 degrees Celsius or about 250 - 260 fahrenheit.
Might look something like this before you chuck it in the oven:


Cover the pan with foil as tightly as you can or if your lucky and got a covered pot like I do slap that baby on and let 'er cook for about 3 or 4 hours. check it every so often make sure the water don't run out.
After about three hours with this one I pulled the meat out and set up on the copping block. Now most folks will tell you to let the meat a cool a bit before you start pulling it apart, That's for women and girly-men. What the hell you're gonna be using a coupla forks to pull the meat apart. Why Wait? I chopped the big chunk of meat into more manageble portions and start pullin as the steam rise up. Smells fucking wonderful, look delicious


I just sliced in the raost to get 30 - 40 mm slices and using two forks start pulling the pork apart. now this ain''t necessarily the most elegant method but it works and pulling a three kilo roast apart from one big chuck in a time consuming pain in the ass.
Action shot:

That's mne pulling some of the pork I chopped off into into bite-sized chunks (I had a nibbnle or two).
Once allteh shred/pullin is done you chuck everything back in the pot/pan with the pan juices make sure to mix up the pork and coat all the meat with them pan juices. (should still be plenty) like this:


Did I mention you need to turn the oven up to high as she'll go while you're pullin and shreddin? Remember to do that. now stick the pot/pan back in your hot as hell oven and let that roast for a while the top layer should brown up nicely, crisply. Go back and turn over teh meat as it gets browned and crisp just turn teh top layer under and bring up soe of the lower stuff. This can take two three or foru turns depends on how deep the pan is. You can skim off the top layer and serve it up bu tit'sa best if you let it all cook up and dump the whole thing in the serving dish.
By this time I've been drinking a few and neglected to take a shot of the crispy top layer but this is carnitas as served:


My favorite way to eat this stuff:



'Course since we had company we had to put up a few side dishes and condiments:


Far left, cilantro/pak chee/coriander leaf lime juice and finely chopped onion. Next, moving right, pico degallo (peak of the rooster) lime juice cilantro/etc tomatoes, onions and a handful of chilies. Then we gotr ba\lack beans some pickled olives and jalapenos few fresh chilies and saffron rice, salad. Serve this up with some Beer lao dark, Dos equis or whatever happens to be handy a robust red wine won;t go amiss.

Mexican food is easy to do in Thailand the ingredients are here. The restaurants rarely get it right stay home and make some of your own.

Enjoy, think I'm gonna have me one more bite right now...

Hey FF, I have an old Mexican friend in town and she’s planning a big Mexican food cook-up and tequila session at Chateau Kerr sometime over the next few weeks. We can find most ingredients in Bangkok, but having some problems locating the corn flour used to make the masa for tortillas. We’d also love to find some guajillo chillies, but we’ll likely end up using local chillies as a substitute.

Any tips on where to find the right cornflour or a good Thai equivalent? The young lass will be in Chiang Mai for a few days next week and could buy the ingredients up there or in Bangkok.