Deep Dish With Sohla And Ham: Tacos Al Pastor «

Ham El-Waylly: If it’s not cooked on a spit, it is not a shwarma. But a lot of people who make claims, they’re like, “Yeah, it’s a shwarma,” and then they just do like thinly sliced meat cooked on a flat top, thrown in a pita. It burns me up inside.

Sohla El-Waylly: You have tried every single shwarma of place that’s like within a reasonable distance of our home.

Ham El-Waylly: And sometimes unreasonable distance.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] And it’s most of the time it’s not built in the vertical spit.

Ham El-Waylly: It’s a shame. It’s a damn shame. 

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Ham El-Waylly: Welcome to Deep Dish, the show where we do deep dives on dishes we love, and then cook them. 

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] I didn’t know, like, you had that radio voice in you. All of a sudden … Batman voice.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, I can bust it out whenever.

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Sohla El-Waylly: I’m Sohla … 

Ham El-Waylly: And I’m Ham. 

Sohla El-Waylly: We’re married … 

Ham El-Waylly: And we’re chefs.

Sohla El-Waylly: We nerd out on food together all day long

Ham El-Waylly: And we love learning about the stories behind different dishes and ingredients.

Sohla El-Waylly: Now, we’re going to do all that nerding out on this podcast.

Ham El-Waylly: In each episode of Deep Dish, we’ll deep dive into the story behind a food.

Sohla El-Waylly: Then we’ll head home to our kitchen and see what we feel inspired to cook up. 

Ham El-Waylly: Today’s story, the twisting tale of tacos Al Pastor: From Lebanon to Mexico City.

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Ham El-Waylly: First of all, for people who don’t know what al pastor is, the al pastor taco is a pork taco. The pork is usually seasoned with chiles and achiote. Achiote, or annatto seeds, it’s what gives the pork its reddish color and it also has an earthy flavor. The pork is stacked on a vertical spit, stacked in a way where it looks like a spinning top, and that in Spanish is a trompo. That spit spins in front of usually this metal grate that has some kind of heat source behind…