There’s a seriousness and beauty to a food whose preparation begins with the need to dig a rather large hole. Though it might come as a surprise that throughout the global history of gastronomy, cooking has happened in stone-lined pits for precisely the same reasons slow cookers, multi-cookers, and air fryers have all had their moments: convenience, reliability, and ease of use.

That's right, a convenient, reliable, and easy-to-use hole in the ground.

Once built, a stone-lined pit oven provides thermal regulation and moisture retention, just like that multi-cooker taking up countertop space. 

The sealed environment of a cooking pit — layers of rock, followed by coals, then foods being cooked, sealed with branches and a loose layer of soil — retains heat and the moisture created while cooking. Add to that the convenience of not needing to tend to a cooking fire or worry about a pot running dry.

This traditional cooking vessel is large enough to contain a beast of any size, which means it's easy to make a meal of enough tender succulent meat to feed a village. And in Mexico that meal is traditionally barbacoa.

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Barbacoa is both the dish and the method of cooking. The dish is found in various forms throughout Mexico.

In Sonora, beef is used and the banana leaves of Yucatán’s pork-based cochinita pibil are traded for spiky maguey (agave) leaves, which lend a darkly sweet, fibrous and spiky addition to the pit.

In the northern states, the sauce is simpler, not stained red with annatto, but more of a rich broth in which to dip the meat in.

When making barbacoa in a pit, one of the necessary layers is a dish for collecting the broth released during the slow cooking process. Clay would have traditionally been used, though now it is more likely to be a stainless steel stockpot.

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Though pit roasting is the traditional way to make barbacoa, there is no need for a hole in the ground when we have modern conveniences like ovens and good cookware.

However, multi-cookers don't do the job. Though they yield tender texture, they can't offer the same depth of flavor, something which can only be achieved with low, slow cooking.

Most home ovens are fantastic at retaining their heat, but also function on an on and off cycle to regulate temperature, rather than pumping out consistent heat.

In order to simulate the low even heat of a pit oven, where a layer of rocks at the bottom radiate back the heat of the coals on them, the oven can be given more thermal radiant mass by stuffing it with things like a pizza stone, baking trays and a cast iron pan, both above and below the cooking beef.

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A cast-iron Dutch oven is a great medium for cooking, as it resembles that tightly sealed pit oven environment. If you don't have a Dutch oven, a roasting pan can be used, but you will need to wrap it in several layers of aluminum foil to create a sealed vessel.

Vegetables added to the barbacoa meat are left large, as the slow cooking process will take care of softening them enough so they nearly vanish into the sauce, which is left simple with just oregano and garlic used as aromatics to accent the deep beef flavor.

If you can't find maguey (agave) leaves, banana leaves can be substituted. The one aspect of making barbacoa that cannot be compromised is time. Good barbacoa is a day-long project. This recipe calls for an eight-hour roast, but if time allows, drop the cooking temperature to 250°F, and cook for approximately 12 hours.

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Questions or comments? Email the culinary team at cooking@azcentral.com. Follow chef Minerva Orduño Rincón on Instagram @cucumbersandlimes.

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