How To Make Cuban Mojo Marinade

Mojo is garlic, citrus, and oregano bloomed in hot oil, and the hot oil is the step that separates it from every other citrus marinade. Pouring warm oil over raw garlic takes the harsh edge off it and pulls the oregano open without cooking either into submission. It is the marinade behind Cuban roast pork and behind the sandwich that follows it.

Equipment

You want a mortar or a small processor for the garlic, since mojo traditionally uses a paste rather than a mince. The Enameled Cast Iron Mortar and Pestle does it properly, and the Mini Electric Garlic Chopper is the fast version. Heat the oil in a small pan and combine everything in the Large Capacity Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl with Scale, which gives you room to whisk without splashing hot oil. Store it in a Le Parfait Super Jar.

Ingredients

1 cup sour orange juice (naranja agria), or 2/3 cup orange juice plus 1/3 cup lime juice
12 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 small white onion, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
2 bay leaves

Ingredient Selection

Sour orange, naranja agria, is the authentic base and worth seeking out in Latin markets, frozen or bottled. It is more bitter and more floral than sweet orange. The standard substitute, two parts orange juice to one part lime, gets you genuinely close and is what most Cuban-American home cooks in the United States actually use.

Twelve cloves is not a typo. Mojo is a garlic sauce that happens to contain citrus, not the other way around, and crushing the garlic to a paste with a little salt gives a completely different result from mincing it, the paste dissolves into the marinade rather than sitting in it as chips that burn on the grill.

Method

Mise en Place

Make the garlic paste: Crush the garlic with a teaspoon of the salt in a mortar until it forms a smooth paste, or pulse it in a small processor.
Juice the citrus: If using the substitute, combine the orange and lime juice now.

Bloom the Aromatics

Heat the oil: Warm the olive oil in a small pan until it shimmers but does not smoke, roughly 200°F to 250°F. Too hot and the garlic fries and turns bitter.
Pour over the garlic: Put the garlic paste, oregano, cumin, and pepper in the mixing bowl and pour the hot oil over them. It will sizzle and go intensely fragrant. Let it sit 5 minutes.

Combine and Rest

Add the citrus: Whisk in the sour orange juice and remaining salt. Add the sliced onion and bay leaves.
Rest: Let it stand at room temperature 30 minutes, or refrigerate overnight. The onion softens and the bay works its way in.

How to Marinate

Mojo is used on large cuts more often than small ones, and large cuts want time and depth. Pierce a pork shoulder all over with a knife tip before marinating so the liquid gets past the fat cap.

Pork shoulder, whole: 12 to 24 hours, and up to 48 for a large bone-in roast.
Pork chops or tenderloin: 4 to 12 hours.
Chicken, bone-in: 4 to 24 hours.
Yuca, plantain, vegetables: served as a sauce rather than a marinade, spooned over after cooking.
Fish: 20 to 30 minutes.

Refrigerate throughout, and use a glass or plastic container rather than metal, which reacts with the citrus.

Serving and Application

For lechón asado, roast the marinated shoulder low, around 300°F, until it pulls apart, then raise the heat at the end to crisp the skin. Reserve a cup of clean mojo before marinating and warm it gently to spoon over the carved meat, this is standard and it is where a lot of the dish's brightness comes from.

Leftover roast pork, ham, Swiss, pickles, and mustard, pressed, is a Cuban sandwich. That is arguably the real reason to make a shoulder this size.

Popular Variations

Mojo de ajo: Far heavier on garlic and oil, gently confited, used as a sauce for shrimp and fish rather than a marinade.
Puerto Rican mojo isleño: A tomato and olive based sauce, a different dish sharing the name.
Canarian mojo verde: The Canary Islands ancestor, built on cilantro or parsley and green peppers.

Make Ahead, Storage and Food Safety

Clean mojo keeps a week refrigerated and improves after the first day. As with any raw-garlic-in-oil preparation, keep it cold rather than on the counter; Oregon State University Extension's publication on herbs and vegetables in oil is the guidance to follow, and it is stricter than intuition suggests.

Mojo that has held raw pork must be boiled a full minute before it can be served, or set aside clean beforehand. Given how often mojo is served as a table sauce alongside the meat it marinated, this is the single most important line on this page.

History

Mojo came to Cuba from the Canary Islands, whose settlers arrived in significant numbers from the sixteenth century onward and brought with them a family of garlic-and-oil sauces still eaten there today. The Canarian originals lean on local peppers and herbs; the Cuban version reoriented around sour orange, which grew readily on the island. The word itself descends from the Portuguese molho, meaning sauce. Its current prominence in the United States owes largely to Cuban communities in Florida, where mojo-marinated pork and the sandwich built from its leftovers became regional staples.

References

Related Guides

A whole shoulder means understanding where it comes from, and How to Butcher a Pig covers the primals. For the sweet, cooked counterpart brushed on at the end of a pork cook rather than rubbed in at the start, see How To Make Barbecue Sauce. And Chimichurri is the other great garlic-and-herb sauce that doubles as a marinade.

Thank You

Thanks for cooking through this one. If you track down real naranja agria and can taste the difference, I would like to hear about it through the contact page.

Chef Alan
Wine Drop Cookery
35 years, Six Four Diamond Awards