One of the things I love about living in South Florida is how easy it is to find good Cuban food. I don’t think I’ve ever tried a dish I didn’t like, but I can’t say I’ve ever made Cuban food at home. That must change! Mojo pork sounded like a good place to start, but I was a little unsure of this marinade recipe because it doesn’t call for sour oranges. However, I was reassured after reading the author’s post and seeing that she tried to recreate the taste using a combination of oranges and lime. Now I was curious. Would it really work? I had to know.
A traditional Cuban roasted pork recipe that is very simple, yet packed with tons of flavor! There is nothing to this pork except an amazing marinade, but it is honestly some of the best meat I’ve ever put in my mouth.
The Ingredients
There are a fair amount of ingredients in this mojo pork, but none were unusually expensive or difficult to find. The pork shoulder was the most expensive item at $11.60 for 3.88 pounds. Not bad for 6 servings. And although the label said boneless, there was a bone in it. I’m not sure if that’s the norm for this particular cut or if it was a packaging error. Luckily it was fairly easy to cut around when I carved the cooked roast.
Quantities of the oranges and limes aren’t given, just for the amount of juice and zest you will need. I used 1 orange for the zest and 1 1/2 oranges for enough juice. Two limes were enough for the lime juice. I’m glad I bought 3, though, because you never know it limes will be juicy or dry.
The Process
Most of the work for this recipe is making the marinade. There are two methods listed, with or without a food processor. I pulled out my mini-prep, thinking it could handle the job. However, a quick read through the ingredients made me rethink that, and I’m really glad I did. This is a job for a full-sized food processor. I had my pork shoulder marinating in just 10 minutes, and I left it in the refrigerator overnight to make sure the roast soaked up the flavors.
The next night it was just a matter of preheating the oven and cooking the roast. I used a roasting pan with a wire rack, but no worries if you don’t have one. The author includes an ingenious alternative of placing a wire cooling rack on a baking sheet that would have been just as effective. No matter which method you use, be sure to line the pan with foil for easy cleanup. I didn’t, and the marinade that dripped while cooking burned onto the pan. It took multiple scrubbings to remove it.
The total time spent on this roast was 2 hours 40 minutes, plus marinating overnight. Here’s how the times broke down:
- 10 minutes to prep the marinade
- 24 hours to marinate
- 10 minutes to preheat the oven
- 2 hours to roast
- 20 minutes to stand after roasting
