Barbacoa: Pit Cooked Meat Explained

What Barbacoa Means

Barbacoa, in the traditional sense, is meat cooked slowly in an earth oven, a pit dug in the ground. The word is usually traced to a Caribbean Indigenous term for a wooden frame used to cook or smoke food, and it is related to the English word “barbecue”. In everyday speech in Mexico, however, the word has come to cover several things: the pit method itself, the tender shredded meat that results, and, in some places, meat cooked by steaming or roasting in an ordinary oven or pot and sold under the same name.

This article is about the pit-cooked version, which is most closely associated with lamb in the central highlands, and with beef in some parts of the north.

How the Pit Works

Methods vary by family and region, but the general pattern is consistent.

1. A deep hole is dug and lined with stones or bricks. A wood fire is lit inside and allowed to burn down until the stones are very hot.
2. The embers are cleared or spread out, and a container is set at the bottom to catch the drippings. This is usually a large pot or pan, often with water and sometimes with chickpeas, rice, onion or dried chiles in it.
3. A rack or a layer of material is placed over the pot to hold the meat above it.
4. The meat, seasoned with salt and sometimes a chile paste, is wrapped in the leaves of the maguey (agave) plant, which are softened over heat first so that they can be folded. In some places other leaves are used.
5. The bundles are laid on the rack, and the pit is sealed with more leaves, a metal sheet and a layer of earth to keep the heat in.
6. The meat cooks for many hours, often overnight, and is opened the next morning.

The effect is a mix of steaming and gentle roasting. The meat cooks in its own juices, the leaves protect it from direct heat and give a faint vegetal, slightly sweet aroma, and the sealed pit holds a steady temperature. The result is meat that is very tender and moist, which pulls apart easily.

The Consome

One of the best-loved parts of the process is the broth. The juices that drip from the meat collect in the pot below and cook together with whatever was placed there. The resulting consome is usually served in a cup or bowl alongside the meat, often with a little chopped onion, cilantro and lime. It is sometimes sipped before the tacos or alongside them. The consome has a close relationship with the broths described under birria stew, though they are separate dishes with different seasonings.

Why Lamb, and Where

Sheep arrived in Mexico with the Spanish in the sixteenth century, so lamb barbacoa in its present form is a post-contact tradition. Earth-oven cooking itself is much older in the Americas, and Indigenous cooks used pits for many foods, including other meats and plants such as agave hearts. The modern barbacoa tradition seems to combine those techniques with the new livestock.

Lamb barbacoa is strongly associated with Hidalgo and the Valle del Mezquital, the State of Mexico, Tlaxcala and Puebla, and with the markets around Mexico City. It is often a weekend food. Families and market vendors traditionally prepare it on Saturday night, and it is sold on Sunday morning, frequently until it runs out. That weekend rhythm is part of the dish’s identity, and it fits into the wider mealtime rhythm of leisurely late-morning eating.

Beef Barbacoa and Other Versions

In the north-east, particularly Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas, barbacoa often means beef, and most often the cow’s head. Cooks may seal the head in a pit, or cook it in a steamer, an oven or a large container. The various cuts of the head are sold by type, such as cheek, tongue and lips, and each has a different texture. The northern tradition is usually served on flour or corn tortillas with salsa.

There are other related pit methods in Mexico. In the Yucatan Peninsula, cochinita pibil is traditionally cooked in a pit (the Maya word is pib), with achiote and sour orange, and is a separate dish with its own character. Goat is cooked by pit methods in some northern and central regions. Chicken, turkey and other meats appear in some local traditions. Be cautious about any claim that one type is “the” authentic barbacoa. The name describes a family of related techniques, not one recipe.

Serving Barbacoa

Barbacoa is typically served in one of a few ways:

• By weight, with a stack of warm corn tortillas, so diners fill their own tacos.
• With onion, cilantro, lime and a sharp, thin salsa. A tomatillo salsa or a dried chile salsa made from toasted chiles is common.
• With consome on the side, and sometimes with rice and beans in the broth.

Some stands sell different parts of the animal: more lean meat, fattier cuts, or the cheek. Choosing is partly a matter of taste.

Cooking Barbacoa at Home

Few homes have a pit, and there are good reasons not to improvise one without experience. Digging a large fire pit involves fire risk, the danger of collapse and the practical problem of managing heat and smoke safely. It also needs local knowledge about where fires are permitted and what materials are safe to heat; some stones can crack or burst, and wet or porous stones can be hazardous in a hot fire.

Meat also needs to reach a safe internal temperature all the way through. In a traditional pit, the very long cooking time achieves this in most circumstances, but a food thermometer is a sensible check if you are cooking a similar dish another way.

Home cooks often approximate the effect with a covered pot or roasting pan, a low oven, and wrapping the meat tightly. Banana leaves or foil can stand in for maguey leaves. The flavor is not identical, but the principle of long, moist, low-temperature cooking is the same.

A Living Craft

Pit barbacoa is a craft passed from cook to cook. The people who run these pits judge readiness by experience, by smell, and by the feel of the meat rather than by a printed time. For visitors, the practical advice is simple: go early, ask what is available, and eat where there are lines of local customers. For readers elsewhere, the dish is a useful reminder that some of Mexican cooking’s most celebrated food depends on patience and on the cooking vessel itself, in this case a hole in the ground.