Pork-tastic Tacos From Marination Mobile

Photo by Leslie Kelly

Marination Mobile's Roz Edison and Kamala Saxton bring the heat.

​Kogi, the insanely popular Korean BBQ taco truck in L.A., helped inspire Kamala Sexton and Roz Edison to roll out Marination Mobile on the streets of Seattle last year. Read part one and part two of this week's Grillaxin to learn more. Here's the deep dish on making your own tacos. The recipe serves 8, which sounds like a good excuse to have a porky party.

Marination Mobile Spicy Pork Tacos

Ingredients
For Spicy Pork:
2 pounds pork butt, partially frozen and trimmed
1 1/2 cups spicy pork marinade

For Slaw:
1/4 head green cabbage, chiffonade
1 cup carrots, julienned
1 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
6 green onions, cut 1/8 inch thick
1 cup pickled ginger vinaigrette
kosher salt, to taste
For Tacos:
1/4 cup canola oil
8 ounces sliced white onions, julienned
2 ounces raw jalapeno, sliced
2 tablespoons pure sesame oil
2 tablespoons sugar syrup
3/4 cup spicy red chili paste
3 limes, cut into 24 wedges
3/4 cup pickled jalapenos
1/4 cup sesame seeds
48 corn tortillas

Slice partially frozen pork butt as thinly as possible. Add spicy pork
marinade, mixing well by hand and making sure all pieces get coated. Allow
pork to marinate for 36-48 hours before cooking.

Prepare Slaw
Slice green cabbage very thinly. Add matchstick carrots, cilantro, green
onions and toss together thoroughly. Add vinaigrette and kosher salt, to
taste, just before serving.

Cooking Pork
Heat skillet on medium to medium-high heat. Spread canola oil on skillet.
Once skillet is hot, add onion and cook to soften, about 2 minutes. Add raw
jalapenos and stir into onions. Break-up the sliced pork and spread over the
top of the onion mixture. Drizzle sesame oil over the top of the pork and
mix together with the onions and jalapenos.

Continue mixing pork periodically until it is cooked through. Be sure to
break up the pork while cooking so that there are no large chunks. Drizzle
the sugar syrup over the pork and mix together to cook sugar into pork. Be
careful to do this quickly or the sugar will burn.

Spicy pork should be a deep red color. Transfer to serving dish and hold for
assembly.

Taco Assembly
No more than 30 minutes before assembly, add the pickled ginger vinaigrette
and kosher salt to slaw. Heat corn tortillas in skillet. For each taco,
place 2 corn tortillas on a plate. Put 1 1/2 teaspoons of spicy red chili paste down the middle of the two tortillas. Add about 1.25 ounces of the cooked spicy pork. Place about 1 ounce of dressed slaw on top of pork. Put one lime wedge in the corner. Put a pinch of pickled jalapenos in the opposite corner. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top. Serve and enjoy. Makes 24 tacos.