Thermoblog by Martin Earl 5/23/2020
I feel like I could write an entire blog devoted to tacos and keep myself in material for years. Endless variations can be traced from region to region for authentic tacos and those variations can be reshaped and reformed by fusing them with other cuisines and ingredients or methods to create yet more variations. I mean, have you ever had a Korean pork belly taco with kimchi? It’s phenomenal.
But one of the great, classic taco varieties is barbacoa, and here we’ll be looking at a great method for making smoked barbacoa tacos at home with some guidance from MeatChurch. Will it be 100% authentic, like those served in Mexico? Goodness no! (You’ll see why, below.) Will it be delicious and amazingly rich? Our temperature control will all but guarantee it!
What is barbacoa?Barbacoa was the great Great Granddaddy of American BBQ. Originally it was a Caribbean TaÃno food, but it made its way to both the U.S. and Mexico. In the U.S., it became barbecue in all its regional variations. A method similar to the Arawak version evolved independently in Mexico, using a pit called a pib, and the method later took on the borrowed name of barbacoa. (The original word still persists in the name of another great Mexican dish, cochinita pibil.)
It is often made by cooking a whole sheep or goat in a pit dug in the ground and lined with leaves, though there are regional variations in Mexican barbacoa just as there are in American barbecue. Renowned Mexican food specialist Diana Kennedy has this to say about it:
"Meat cooked en barbacoa is Sunday food in Mexico, and caries tremendously from region to region. The word barbacoa refers to pit barbecuing… There are specialists who dedicate themselves to this pit barbecuing, as it takes a great deal of preparation and long cooking. Perhaps the most popularly known barbacoa is that of central Mexico—the states of Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, and Mexico—where the unseasoned meat, usually mutton, is cooked in a pit lined with maguey (century plant leaves. The head of the animal is included… Traditionally the very soft meat is eaten as tacos, wrapped in soft, steaming tortillas and doused with a fiery sauce.
—Diana Kennedy, Mexican Regional Cooking, pp. 118–119And while I desperately want to make barbacoa that way, it is, let us say, a bit of a production. We can, however, do our best to replicate some of the function and feel of barbacoa in our smokers.
More:
https://blog.thermoworks.com/beef/barbacoa-tacos/
