Where does Cochinita pibil (slow-roasted pork) come from?
Cochinita pibil comes from the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. It is pork soaked in bitter orange juice and red achiote, wrapped in banana leaves and slow-roasted in a píib, the earth oven the Maya were using long before the Spanish brought pigs.
An oven dug into the earth
A píib, or pib in Spanish, starts as a hole in the ground. Firewood burns in it down to embers, stones laid on top grow hot, and the food goes in. Then everything is covered with branches and a layer of earth, which seals in the juices and steam. No pre-Hispanic codex explains the píib, but experts conclude it is older than colonial rule: the earth oven was never a Spanish tradition, and other Mesoamerican peoples used it too.
From game to pork
Pigs, sheep and cattle reached Mexico with the Spanish in the early 16th century. Before that, the Maya roasted game such as deer in the píib, and pork took over in colonial times. The dish's name joins the two worlds: cochinita is Spanish for a baby pig, and pibil is the Maya word for food cooked in a píib. The oldest written record of píib is a 16th-century Maya dictionary, which describes an oven in which pumpkins, meat and more were roasted under the ground.
Sunday mornings in Yucatán
True cochinita is a whole suckling pig, though many cooks now use pork shoulder or loin. Yucatecan recipes always marinate it in the juice of bitter oranges; elsewhere, sweet orange with lime or vinegar stands in. The seasoned meat is laid in a metal tin on a bed of roasted banana leaves, wrapped in them and buried. By tradition it is eaten on Sunday mornings and holidays, with corn tortillas, refried black beans and red onions pickled in bitter orange.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Cochinita pibil ↗ · es.wikipedia.org ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Píib ↗ · mexiconewsdaily.com ↗
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