The sear: getting real char in a hot pan
Ok so the meat's been in the oven, it's cooked through, and now we're at the part everybody's actually been waiting for. This is the step that turns "cooked pork" into al pastor. If you skip it or rush it you'll end up with something fine but kind of beige and sad, and nobody wants beige and sad tacos.
Here's the thing — char is a technique, not a garnish. Most people are scared of black spots. They see a little scorch on the edge of a piece of pork and think they messed up. You didn't mess up. If nothing's a little burnt you didn't push it hard enough. The char is where the whole thing lives, same as with the corn and the poblanos we'll do later. That bitter, smoky edge is doing real work on your tongue and it's what separates this from a pork chop.
Get the pan actually hot first
Cast iron or a heavy stainless skillet, no nonstick. Nonstick can't take the heat you need and it'll just steam the meat instead of searing it.
Get the pan on high heat for a good 3-4 minutes before anything touches it. You want it hot enough that a drop of water flicked in it skitters and disappears almost instantly. If you put the pork in too early it'll just sweat and gray out. Patience here, even though everything in you wants to move fast because the smell coming off that oven pork is good.
A thin layer of oil, something with a high smoke point — avocado oil or plain vegetable oil, not olive oil, it'll smoke bitter before the pan's hot enough.
Work in batches, don't crowd it
This is the part people blow. They dump the whole quarter-inch sliced pork in at once because they're hungry and it's 6pm and everyone's standing around. Don't. Crowded pork releases moisture, the pan temp drops, and you get gray simmered meat instead of char.
Single layer, pieces not touching. Give it 45 seconds to a minute a side, give or take depending on your stove — you're listening for a hard sizzle, not a soft one. Tilt the pan a little if you need to get more contact on the thinner pieces. Pull it when you've got real dark edges, not just golden. Dark. That's the char talking.
Do it in batches, keep the finished pork in a warm oven (like 200°F) while you sear the rest. Yeah it's more steps. It's worth it.
Salt again here
I know we salted the marinade. Salt it again now, right in the pan, a light pass. Searing changes how salt sits on meat and a lot of what tastes "flat" after all this work is actually just under-salted, not missing some secret ingredient. Same rule applies later when we build salsa — people forget salsa needs seasoning too and blame the recipe instead of the salt shaker.
A story, since my hands are usually busy anyway
I'll tell you honestly, Ximena is my salsa taster now, and she does not go easy on me. She rates everything out of ten. I made a tomatillo salsa a while back that I genuinely thought was one of my better ones — bright, a little funky, I was proud of it. She gave it a four. Just flat "four" and went back to her phone.
I reworked the whole thing. Turned out it needed way more salt and a squeeze of lime at the very end, not cooked in. I bring this up here because the same exact instinct applies to your pork right now — the thing that separates good from forgettable is usually seasoning at the very last step, not some ingredient you're missing. Taste as you go. Trust a second opinion if you've got a picky kid or spouse standing nearby. They'll tell you the truth faster than you'll tell yourself.
A caution worth saying plainly
That pan is going to be genuinely, dangerously hot, hotter than most home cooks run their stove day to day. Keep the handle turned away from the edge of the stove, don't set a wet towel down near it, and if you've got kids around the kitchen this is the moment to actually watch where they're standing. Cast iron holds heat a long time after you take it off the burner too — I've grabbed a handle out of habit more than once. 🔥
Once it's all seared, that's your al pastor. Done. Everything else from here — tortillas, salsas, onion, cilantro, pineapple, lime — is assembly.
Before next time: think about what you want on your plate around this meat, because next lesson we start building the salsas, and I want you coming in with an opinion about what you like, not a blank slate.