Order at a taqueria without glancing at what’s cooking behind the counter and the two pork tacos can look almost identical. Same small corn tortilla, same onion and cilantro. Carnitas is pork simmered and fried in lard until tender. Al pastor is thin-sliced, chile-marinated pork roasted on a vertical spit.
Carnitas is the pick if you want rich, juicy pork with crisp edges. Al pastor is for tang, char and pineapple.
Tasting Table puts al pastor in 1930s Puebla. That decade did produce tacos arabes, though, the lamb shawarma precursor. Food historian Jeffrey Pilcher dates the pork and chile version to the 1960s, when second-generation Lebanese Mexicans adapted it in Mexico City (CNN, 2025).
How Do Carnitas and Al Pastor Differ at a Glance?
Not by the animal, since both are pork. Carnitas gets slow-cooked in lard until tender and then crisped. Al pastor is sliced thin, marinated in achiote and dried chiles, and cooked on a vertical spit called a trompo.
Both end up in a corn tortilla, so the gap comes down to method, seasoning and flavor.
| Attribute | Carnitas | Al pastor |
|---|---|---|
| Pork cut | Shoulder or butt, plus offal cuts in Michoacan | Boneless shoulder, sliced thin |
| Cooking method | Simmered and fried in lard in a cazo | Stacked on a trompo and shaved |
| Seasoning | Mostly salt, sometimes orange | Achiote, guajillo, ancho, vinegar, spices |
| Flavor | Rich, pork-forward | Tangy, lightly sweet, charred |
| Texture | Tender center, crisp edges | Thin slices, caramelized edges |
| Typical toppings | Onion, cilantro, salsa, lime | Pineapple, onion, cilantro, lime |
| Origin | Michoacan | Puebla and Mexico City |
The names don’t help much. Carnitas translates to “little meats,” and al pastor means “shepherd style.”
If you’re thinking carnitas is just pulled pork, it isn’t. Pulled pork gets smoke, while carnitas gets fat and a crust at the end. And al pastor isn’t carne asada either, because the spit and the chile marinade change the whole thing.
How Is Each One Cooked?
Carnitas gets cooked in lard until tender and then crisped. Al pastor goes onto a trompo as marinated slices, and the outside chars while the taquero shaves it off.
Carnitas in the Cazo
Cooks in Quiroga sear the pork first and then simmer it slowly. Mexico News Daily’s 2025 reporting puts the temperature sweet spot at 194 to 212 degrees F, with the full cook running three to four hours.
That range sits far above the USDA minimum of 145 degrees F with a three-minute rest for whole cuts of pork (USDA, 2011). Carnitas is cooked for tenderness, not safety, because shoulder needs hours before its connective tissue gives way.
Copper conducts heat well, which is why Michoacan cooks insist on the copper cazo. It helps the pork come out crisp outside and tender inside.
The fat is the other half. The pork sits in lard and its own juices, somewhere between a braise and a confit.
At home, a heavy pot handles the braise and a hot skillet or broiler handles the finish. That final sear is what separates carnitas from plain braised pork, and ways to get carnitas crispy mostly come down to it. Honestly, the sear is the whole game.
Al Pastor on the Trompo
The trompo does the job the cazo does for carnitas.
- Marinated pork slices are stacked tightly on a vertical spit.
- A whole pineapple sits on top, and its juices run down the stack.
- Heat chars the outer layer as the spit turns.
- The taquero shaves thin strips straight onto a tortilla.
Thin slices cook quickly and pick up caramelized edges. Nothing sits for hours.
Tacos Los Guichos in Florence, Los Angeles, runs both in a single day. According to LA Magazine, the cazo covers carnitas first and the trompos take over once it runs dry.
What Cuts and Seasonings Go Into Each?
Pork shoulder is where both begin. From there carnitas barely gets seasoned past salt, and al pastor gets soaked in an achiote and dried chile marinade.
Traditional carnitas gets wider on cuts. In Quiroga nearly every part of the pig goes into the cazo, and diners order by piece, so you’ll hear maciza (the lean meat), costilla (rib), buche (stomach) and cuerito (skin).
Pork butt is what most people use at home, since it has plenty of meaty flavor and is easy to find, according to America’s Test Kitchen. The debate over which pork cut works best for carnitas rarely goes past that.
Al pastor is stricter. Boneless pork shoulder sliced thin is the standard, though some recipes swap in pork loin.
Carnitas seasoning stays minimal. Salt does most of the work, and some cooks add orange juice or Coca-Cola, which shifts the flavor and color slightly. A well-built carnitas seasoning blend leans on garlic, bay and citrus and keeps the pork in front.
The al pastor marinade has a lot more going on. Achiote gives it the red-orange hue and an earthy flavor. Guajillo and ancho chiles get rehydrated and blended in, vinegar and pineapple juice supply the acid, and garlic, cumin and oregano round it out.
Fresh pineapple juice carries bromelain, a protease that breaks down protein, so a long marinade turns pork mushy. Heat deactivates the enzyme, and a 2000 study in Transactions of the ASAE modeled that inactivation in pineapple juice across 55 to 67 degrees C.
That is why many recipes use canned pineapple juice or boil the marinade first.
How Do They Taste and Feel Different?
Carnitas tastes like very well-browned pork. It’s rich and juicy, with crisp edges. Al pastor is tangy and a little sweet, with char and chile in every slice.
Inside a carnitas taco the meat is juicy and shreddable, and the edges are browned from the fat. Pork flavor leads while the seasoning stays quiet. Al pastor arrives as thin, tender slices with caramelized edges and a tang from vinegar and pineapple, and the chile and achiote sit up front with the pork underneath.
In carnitas the fat delivers most of the flavor. Al pastor leans on the marinade for that.
Al pastor carries more heat, but its chiles are mild. Ancho measures 1,000 to 2,000 Scoville units (Chile Pepper Institute), and guajillo is commonly listed at 2,500 to 5,000.
Carnitas has no chile in it at all. Any heat comes from the salsa on top.
Texture can fail in each. Carnitas finished in a covered pot with no sear comes out soft, like plain braised pork, and al pastor sliced thick loses the caramelized edge that thin slices pick up.
How Are Carnitas and Al Pastor Served?
Street tacos on small corn tortillas, for both. Carnitas keeps the toppings minimal, and al pastor is built around the pineapple.
Small is the point. El Califa’s Carlos Ceja told the BBC in 2015 that al pastor tortillas should run smaller than usual, as Mexico News Daily’s 2025 profile recounts.
For carnitas, the owner of Don Chelo, a taqueria in Boca del Rio, Veracruz, says a taco must carry cilantro and chopped onion. Salsa is the diner’s call, whether that’s salsa verde, ranchera or a pico de gallo with habanero.
Past those basics, the wider list of toppings for carnitas tacos runs from salsa to guacamole, though the Michoacan style stays with onion and cilantro.
Onion, cilantro, a squeeze of lime and salsa are standard on al pastor, and El Tizoncito is known for its salsa verde.
Pineapple splits eaters. Some skip the fruit pieces on the taco but still want the juices that dripped onto the pork during roasting.
Neither one has to stay in a tortilla. Carnitas also fills tamales, enchiladas and burritos, while al pastor turns up in quesadillas with Oaxaca or Chihuahua cheese, in burritos and in tortas.
Serving carnitas as a platter instead of tacos opens up a longer list of sides to serve with carnitas.
Where Did Each One Come From?
Carnitas started in Michoacan, and Quiroga gets most of the credit. Al pastor came later, as a Mexican adaptation of Lebanese shawarma worked out in Puebla and Mexico City.
Carnitas has a legend and no paper trail. The story puts the first batch at a banquet Hernan Cortes held after the conquest of Tenochtitlan, but Mexico News Daily calls that unlikely and says no one can point to a start year in Quiroga.
What is certain is that the Spanish brought pigs to Mexico, so carnitas cannot predate them.
Al pastor has a clearer chain, if not clearer dates. Lebanese immigrants carried the shawarma spit-roasting technique to Mexico, and most settled in Puebla and Mexico City. They arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the 1930s, lamb shawarma had become tacos arabes in Puebla, served in a flour tortilla or pita. Then in the late 1950s and 1960s, their Mexican-born children swapped lamb for pork, added a red chile marinade and moved to corn tortillas.
Pork won out partly because most Lebanese Mexicans are Christian and ate it, according to the Spokesman-Review (2021).
Sources disagree on when the dish counts as al pastor, and the gap runs to decades.
| Source | Date and place | What it credits |
|---|---|---|
| Tasting Table | 1930s, Puebla | Lebanese immigrants, creating al pastor itself |
| Jeffrey Pilcher (CNN) | Tacos arabes in 1930s Puebla, al pastor in the 1960s | Second-generation Lebanese Mexicans in Mexico City |
| Mexico News Daily (2025) | Late 1950s or early 1960s, Mexico City | El Huequito (1959) and El Tizoncito (1966), both claiming it |
The split comes from what each source counts. Tasting Table folds tacos arabes into the dish, while Pilcher, who wrote Planet Taco, and Mexico News Daily treat them as a precursor and date the pork and chile version to the mid-century.
Local lore credits El Huequito with the dish and El Tizoncito with the first pineapple, and Chilango reports that El Huequito has always refused to make its tacos with pineapple.
If both accounts hold, the taqueria credited with creating al pastor never added the fruit most diners now expect.
Can You Make Either One at Home?
Yes, with a workaround for each. Carnitas needs a finishing step to stand in for the crust a cazo builds, and al pastor needs some way to stack and char thin slices without a spit.
Carnitas Without a Cazo
Cook’s Illustrated (May/June 2008, posted by America’s Test Kitchen in 2013) braises 4 pounds of boneless pork butt in 2-inch chunks for about 2 hours in a covered pot, then broils the shredded pork for 5 to 8 minutes per side.
The method trades lard for a broiler. A slow cooker handles the braise too, but it does not brown the pork on its own.
Skip the broiler or skillet and you get plain braised meat, since a covered pot steams the pork. Pork loin is the other mistake. It dries out where pork butt stays moist.
Carnitas also cooks ahead well and crisps to order. A hot skillet is the usual fix when reheating leftover carnitas on day two.
Al Pastor Without a Trompo
This one takes patience, not equipment.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Serious Eats method (last updated July 2021) replaces the spit with a loaf pan:
- Toss thin slices of pork in the marinade.
- Layer the slices with bacon in a disposable aluminum loaf pan and refrigerate overnight (at least 4 hours, up to 36).
- Roast at 275 degrees F for about 4 hours.
- Chill the loaf overnight so it sets.
- Slice it thin and sear the slices in a hot pan.
The bacon mimics the fat that bastes shoulder on a real trompo, according to Tasting Table’s reading of the recipe.
The catch is time. The method takes two nights, and the crisp comes from a pan instead of a flame. It tastes like al pastor but does not char like one.
Milk Street offers a shortcut that pounds pork tenderloin thin, marinates it briefly and grills it. You get char in about an hour, but lean tenderloin loses the layered fat.
Which One Should You Order?
Carnitas fits a morning or a Sunday meal, and al pastor fits late at night. If it’s neither, let your appetite for rich pork or tangy char settle the tie.
Feeding a group at home? Carnitas, because it cooks ahead and re-crisps. Craving something sweet and sharp? Al pastor.
Sunday is the traditional day to buy carnitas by the kilo in Michoacan, Mexico News Daily’s Chris Sands reports. His rule for al pastor runs the other way: the later the better, eaten standing up.
Timing matters because the cazo empties. A restaurant guide to Carnitas Don Raul in Morelia warns that arriving after 2 pm at a serious carnitas spot risks finding the leading cuts gone, with only maciza and odds and ends left.
Carnitas is juicy, crisp-edged and forgiving. It doubles as a filling for tamales, enchiladas and burritos, and you get a choice of cuts running from lean maciza to rich skin. The downside is richness. It’s fatty, there’s no acid to cut through it, and the best cuts can sell out by early afternoon.
Al pastor gives you bright acidity and char, and it’s sold late at night. What you give up is consistency. Quality hinges on a guarded marinade and a working trompo, and marinades differ by taqueria (Los Gueros uses orange juice and cinnamon, El Huequito achiote and guajillo), so one order does not predict the next. Making it at home takes two nights.
Tacos are small, so splitting the order between the two costs nothing.
Carnitas vs Al Pastor FAQ
Is carnitas healthier than al pastor?
Neither is reliably healthier. Carnitas simmers in lard and al pastor roasts on a spit, so the cut, the portion and the taqueria decide fat and calories more than the dish name does.
For packaged versions, compare the nutrition labels.
Is al pastor always made with pork?
Traditionally, yes, and shoulder is the standard cut. Mexico City taquerias now roast steak cuts such as sirloin and ribeye on the trompo, and home cooks put the marinade on chicken.
Those versions drift from the classic.
Is adobada the same as al pastor?
Often by name, not always by method. In Baja California, adobada is the common local name for marinated pork that Mexico City calls al pastor.
LA Taco reports that purists argue adobada differs in preparation and cooking method.
Can you freeze leftover carnitas and al pastor?
Yes. The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service says to use most cooked leftovers within 3 to 4 days in the fridge.
Freezing at 0 degrees F keeps food safe indefinitely, and the posted freezer times, such as 2 to 3 months for general leftovers, are for quality only.
Spotting a Traditional Taqueria Before You Order
The equipment tells you what you’re about to eat. A copper cazo of simmering pork means traditional carnitas, and a trompo topped with pineapple means traditional al pastor.
Start with the cheap checks. Look for the cazo or the trompo, then look at the color of the meat for red, achiote-stained slices. Neither needs a conversation. If you want to go further, ask for a carnitas cut by name, which shows whether the cazo holds more than one cut.
Mexico News Daily reported in 2025 that some Mexico City taquerias load the trompo with steak, so the red color carries more weight than the spit alone.
For handling the tacos once they arrive, see the guide to eating a taco.
