Pork Shoulder Pupusas
Yep, I made those too. Pretty darn proud of myself, because these are amazing!
Ingredients:
1 lb pork shoulder, roughly sliced, liberally salt and pepper all over them on cutting board.
1 TBSP lard or vegetable shortening per batch for frying. I used my amazing Brown Sugar Carnita leftover fat with flavors.
1/2 green bell pepper, roughly chopped
1/4 white onion, roughly chopped
1/4 bunch of cilantro stems. Yes, stems have wonderful flavors and all you need to do is to blend it up, so no one will ever notice the fibers.
2 cups of masa, about 2 tsp salt and enough cold water to form a fairly loose corn meal dough. Read the instruction on the masa bag, prepare a bit more water for looser texture. It would feel like very fresh play dough or a tab bit looser. Dry dough will crack when you try to enclose filling.
Method:
Heat a heavy bottom pan on stove on medium high heat, add vegetable oil to coat. Sear pork shoulder pieces on both sides for a few minutes each, until browned. Cool slightly. In the mean time, make corn meal dough per packaging instruction, but add a tab bit more water to form looser dough than corn tortillas.
Add pork shoulder, onion, bell pepper and cilantro stem to a blender. Blend till smooth, I know this sounds weird, blending cooked meat, but bear with me, amazing things are happening here.
Heat up another heavy bottom pan over medium heat, such as cast iron pan with 1 TBSP any sort of fat. Bacon fat, lard, vegetable shortening, vegetable oil all work. Lucky for me, I had leftover brown sugar carnita fat.
Pinch off a piece of dough, about 1 inch diameter ball, flatten out on your palm, making a disc about 1/4 inch thick, slightly thicker in the middle. Put about 1 TBSP of blended meat filling in the middle of the disc. Carefully close the dough around the filling. This step takes skills. Don’t worry if the dough break or crack, or the filling is peeking through the dough. All you need to do is to pull a little bit more dough from the mixing bowl and patch up the holes on your pupusa.
Carefully form the dough with filling into a flatter disc, about 1/2 thick disc. Slowly and carefully lay the pupusa into the pre-heated pan and leave it alone for 4 to 5 minutes. Flip it over when the bottom is golden brown and slightly burned. You want the black spots, which is very crunchy and full of flavors. Fry the other side for 4 to 5 minutes too to achieve the same golden brown color and fully cooked through. Add more grease as needed.
Dish up and enjoy it with some home made charro beans, what a satisfying meal!
