Any Guy's Food Blog

Sopes are essentially tostadas minus the beans. There are a variety of ways you can make sopes, but I'm just going to speak to my own preferred method. Now sopitos, are just small sopes. So we're looking at a crunchy, flat tortilla covered in shredded lettuce, meat and salsa and/or chopped onions. At a restaurant in a town near where I went to school in Mexico, they essentially served sopitos as appetizers and we used to eat the heck out of them after class on occasion. Here's my own recipe for these guys, inspired by my memories of going to Los Portales after class with my friends.

Ingredients:

1 pack small taco corn tortillas (about 3 inches in diameter)
1 can Tecate beer
1 lb pork top round roast
1/2 cup lard or bacon fat
1-2 cups shredded lettuce
1 onion, diced (optional)
1/2 cup cilantro leaves (optional)

Directions:

First you want to slow cook your pork so that it will shred easily. I suggest cooking it on high in a crock pot for about 2 hours soaking in a can of beer. My recommendation is Tecate, but honestly you can use whatever beer you want. Make sure to add enough water so that the roast is entirely covered and doesn't dry out on top. After the roast is cooked, remove it from the crock pot and shred the meat.

In a stock pot or other large pot, melt the lard over medium heat. Add the shredded pork to the lard. Stir regularly and cook until the pork starts to brown and crisp up a little on the outside. If the pork begins to dry out, add another large heaping spoonful or two of lard. The most important part here is that you don't let the pork get too crispy or too dry.

For the tortillas, you will want to heat a large sauce pan with about 1/2 inch of vegetable oil to medium-high. Place each tortilla in the oil for about 3-4 minutes, then flip and fry until brown and crispy all the way through. If it becomes dark brown, it is cooked more than enough, but you want to make sure you don't pull it out too early or it will be tough and chewy in parts. With the frying of the tortillas, it is better to err slightly on the side of overcooked.

Now simply add a splash of lettuce to each tortilla, a helping of pork carnitas and add onions and/or cilantro and/or salsa. I recommend using the avocado sauce that I wrote about here.

Notes:

I would call the difficulty of this moderate. The carnitas and tortilla frying can be a little hairy at times, but it's really not too bad. Just remember: If you're going to make a mistake, under cook the carnitas and overcook the tortillas. Also, a trick that can make the process faster and easier is to use tortilla chips. Instead of frying your own sopito tortillas, you can buy some circular tortilla chips from the store. You want to look for the chips that are the largest and thickest. Be careful because many chips are made very thin and will break easily when serving. If using chips, just try and pick through the bag to find the flattest unbroken chips to use. The sopitos will be a little smaller than normal, but that's fine.