Thoughts on Cooking Up a Mexican Fiesta

[pkadare]

The sous vide is simply for ease of reheating if I make stuff in advance.

[shify]

Of the three meats, I'd be least likely to cook the steak ahead of time. Reheated steak never tastes right to me.

For both the Al Pastor and the chicken - you can cook and then chop in advance and then reheat in a skillet/griddle to get it nice and crispy which will only take a few minutes and not worry too much about overcooking it. For the chicken, that would be very similar to how I do halal-style street meat. Grill off the chicken thighs, let rest/chop and then cook a second time to get crispy

Thinking the order would be grill the steak to doneness and then while its resting, cook up the sliced al pastor and chopped chicken thighs and then chop up the steak and serve all together.

For what you are cooking, I don't see the need/benefit for sous vide

[smokin fool]

Nailed it.
Depends on how many bowling pins you can juggle the day of. I know when I do cooks this inevitably one pin lands on my melon.
I find Mexican tastes better the second day anyways.
Don't forget the guacamole, simple and easy to make right in front of guests.

[Joey877]

If this was me, I would cook everything the day of. Not even sure I can articulate why...I guess because I feel it's always better straight off the cooker (vs. being reheated), plus I selfishly enjoy my guests seeing the work that goes into dinner. Not to mention it can be a great excuse to give yourself a brief break if one is desired. Of course, if this was me, I would also screw something up because I waited until the day of...

[RonB]

Will your guests be gathered around or near the cookers? Would you be able to interact while cooking?

Although most here want to provide the best food possible, the purpose of a get together is to, well, get together. To me, option 3 sounds good, but if you can handle the cookin' and the talkin' at the same time, the best food will be "hot off the grill".

[pkadare]

Thanks, that's kind of the option I was leaning towards as well.

[STEbbq]

I lean towards option 3. Mainly because the tacos al pastor can benefit from additional attention while cooking if you want to slice off little pieces to ensure the next layer is crispy and so on. That can definitely be part of the dinner experience or require additional work the other two proteins would not. That way you can focus on nailing the chicken and beef the day before. As long as you slice to serve the other two meats, I see no issues reheating in sous vide.

[STEbbq]

Oh, you must do the skewer since you have one. No question at all here in my view.

[pkadare]

Roughly:
3 lbs of bavette
4 lbs of bone-in pork shoulder prior to trimming and slicing
12 or so chicken thighs pounded flat

[STEbbq]

How much meat are we talking here?

[pkadare]

As an aside, to whichever moderator moved this to the correct location for me, thanks, not sure how I missed the correct subchannel and WOW, that was amazingly fast! :-)

[pkadare]

One other question, for the al Pastor, I can either use a rotisserie or an upright skewer stuck through the bottom of a pineapple. The rotisserie would be a bit easier as no basting is required, however, I feel that the skewer method will provide a better presentation at meal time.

Thoughts on this?

Thanks!

[pkadare]

This coming Sunday we're having our first group of friends over since this damn pandemic started for a Mexican fiesta meal and I'm looking for some advice on pulling together the proteins. I have the menu all planned out and for the proteins, I'm going to be doing:

1. Carne Asada Tacos
2. Tacos al Pastor
3. Chicken Tacos

I have 3 thoughts on how to approach this:

1. Cook all 3 proteins the day of and have them all ready to go right before we sit down to eat.
2. Cook all 3 proteins the day before, ice bath them, and then reheat in a sous vide the day of.
3. Some combination of the above, likely do the beef and chicken the day before and the pork the day of since the cooking method and presentation of the al Pastor is kind of cool looking.

I have more than enough cookers to be able to handle all 3 proteins the day of, I'm just not sure if I want to be doing that much work when my guests are here, on the other hand, both the beef and chicken would be very quick cooks, and fresh off the grill is generally better than something reheated.

I'm really interested to get the take of the brain trust around here on this.

Thanks!