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Barbecue Puerco Pibil by Jennifer G. of Oklahoma

I love to hear stories from the lucky winners of my Giveaways who have used the pits they won to spread barbecue happiness. Thanks to the generosity of my sponsors, one such winner, Jennifer G., from Oklahoma, who is a terrific cook, was kind to share her version of a braised dish that was cooked barbecue-style in the Green Mountain Grill Davy Crockett model she won. Last week I took a BBQ dish and braised it. . . this week my GMG winner takes a braised dish and barbecues it! Here’s Jennifer’s recipe and pictures. . . Enjoy . . .
GMG Davy Crockett pellet smoker won by Jennifer
BBQ’d Puerco Pibil by Jennifer G of Oklahoma

I’ve made very tasty traditional Puerco Pibil in the past. It’s a succulent slow roasted dish from Yucatan, Mexico, with a mix of Caribbean and Mexican flavors, normally braised under banana leaves. (Pibil is a Mayan word for an underground cooking pit.) It’s quite heavenly!

Since I have recently learned how to BBQ and I smoke a lot of pork butts, this inspired me to meld the two into one: i.e. “BBQ’d Puerco Pibil”. I did this and it worked out quite well. It had all the flavor I’ve tasted in traditional Puerco Pibil along with the delicious smokey flavor and bark from the pit! A match made in heaven if you ask me–the flavors melded very well!

Basically, I cooked this like I would any other BBQ’d Pork Butt: rub it, smoke it, foil it with a portion of vinegar-based sauce, pull it then sauce it again with the same sauce. But in this case the rub is 1/2 of the dry ingredients from the traditional Puerco Pibil recipe. And the sauce is all the vinegar, orange juice, lemon juice, tequila from the liquids portion of of this recipe, along with the other half of the dry ingredients (that we reserved when making the rub)–best to let this sauce meld in the fridge for 24 hours. Let’s get started!

  • Total Time: 34 mins
  • Yield: 4 1x

Ingredients

Units Scale

Photo above: starting from 1 o’clock clockwise and ending with the center of the clock: black peppercorns, garlic powder, ground chile of your choice, kosher salt, allspice, annatto seed, cumin, cloves.

For every 2.5 pounds of pork butt:

  • 2 tablespoons annatto seed
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper corns
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seed (or powder)
  • 2–3 teaspoons your favorite ground up chiles (can be varying degrees of heat but no salt)
  • 3–4 allspice
  • 1/4 teaspoon cloves
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder (or granulated garlic)

Liquid

  • For every 2.5 pounds of pork butt, the liquids are:
  • 1/4 cup white vinegar
  • 1/4 cup orange juice
  • 5 tablespoons lemon juice
  • splash of tequila (optional)
  • Refrigerate the sauce overnight or preferably 24 hours.

Instructions

  1. Grind up the spices well into a powder
  2. Take half of the rub and combine with the liquids.
  3. Take your pork butt and rub it down good with the reserved half of the dry ingredients, and let it sit in the fridge at least until it gets tacky.
  4. (In this case, I made just enough rub/sauce for 2.5 LB of pork butt, so it’s a small roast.)
  5. BBQ your pork butt until an internal temperature of 170F. Since I cooked this on a pellet smoker and want all the smoke flavor I can get, I smoked it first for 2 hours at 180F then bumped it up to 225F. Then I BBQ’d it until an internal temperature of 140F. After this, I bumped the temp up to 275F for the remainder of the cook. If I was smoking this on a WSM or UDS (for example), I’d just BBQ it at 275F from the start until finish.
  6. (This is in my newly acquired GMG Davy Crockett pellet smoker that I won in Harry Soo’s giveaway. Thank you so much Harry and GMG!)

  7. Foil up your pork butt with about 2/3rds of the sauce (shake the sauce up good first).
  8. Cook until probe tender, let it rest an hour, then pull and pour in remaining sauce. Let it meld a little bit, then strain it, and reduce the sauce a bit if needed to thicken it up, then put the sauce back into the pulled pork.
  9. Serve it with steamed white rice and garnish (e.g. with a sprig of cilantro and some sliced tomato).
  10. ENJOY!
  • Author: Harry Soo
  • Prep Time: 30 mins
  • Cook Time: 4 mins
  • Category: Entree
  • Cuisine: American

Find it online: https://www.slapyodaddybbq.com/2024/05/barbecue-puerco-pibil-by-jennifer-g-of-oklahoma/