One of the nicest things about living in South Florida is that we can grill year-round. We used to grill at least once a week, but we’ve been slacking off lately. Well, that’s about to change! Since the weather is presumably warming up in other parts of the country, I thought I would find a recipe that involves grilling. I stumbled across this recipe for Pinchos Morunos (Spanish Pork Kebabs), and now it’s officially time to fire up the grill and give this recipe a try.
Pinchos Morunos are a delicious Spanish tapas. These little pork kebabs are marinated and grilled then served with a paprika aioli sauce for a great summer appetizer.
The Ingredients
There really aren’t a lot of ingredients in this recipe, and I’m not mad about it. A lot of them are spices, and I lucked out and had all of them on hand. I did have to shop for the produce, pork tenderloin, and eggs, but they were all easy to find.
The pork was, of course, the most expensive item at $13.99 per pound or $15.95 for a 1.14-pound piece. I thought that was on the high side, and a quick Google showed me I was right. Pork tenderloin is available in my area for as little as $3.99 a pound. It’s worth looking around if you are on a budget (been there!).
The Process
This recipe can be split into three parts:
- Making the marinade
- Grilling the pork
- Making the aioli
I kind of forgot that I needed to grill the marinating pork in my refrigerator and ended up rushing through the last 2 parts at the same time. It happens this time of year when the sun sets early and I need to photograph my dinner LOL. Because of that, I wasn’t able to break out the time to make the aioli from grilling the kebabs. Here’s how my time was spent:
- 7 minutes to prep the marinade
- 20 minutes to cook and make the aioli
- 27 minutes total (not including 24 hours to marinate)
Making the Kebabs
first up was making the marinade, and it was very simple to do. Just remove the silverskin from the tenderloin, mix up the marinade ingredients, and put it all into a sealed container. I used a gallon-size ziplock bag and press out as much air as possible.
The next afternoon it was time to get grilling. It really didn’t take long to cut the pork into chunks, thread them onto skewers, and grill them up. I was especially glad to have my metal skewers since I was in a rush because they don’t need to be soaked for an hour like bamboo skewers.
Because the grill was preheating while I prepped the kebabs, it was ready to go when the kebabs were. I took my equipment with me out to the patio and got to it. The time listed was spot on, and the meat thermometer read 140℉ in 9 minutes.
Making the Aioli
Since I was in a rush, I ran inside and got the aioli started while the kebabs grilled. I used the whisk attachment on my stand mixer to speed things along. This part went precisely as listed, but the aioli was a lot thinner than I expected. The aioli was thick enough to cling to the kebabs like gravy, but I expected it to be more like mayonnaise.
I’m wondering if it was because I didn’t mix it long enough or the mixer wasn’t effective because the bowl was too big, and as a result, the ingredients were too shallow for the whisk to reach. Next time I will use my mini-prep for the aioli since it’s designed to mix up smaller amounts.
 were excellent on their own, but the addition of lemony paprika aioli made them magical!){kind=link}