Mucbipollo is a tamal, not a pie, though it is the size of a cake and cut in squares like one. The name is usually explained through the Maya verb for burying, which is exactly what happens to it: the wrapped parcel goes into a píib, a pit dug in the yard, lined with stones heated by a wood fire, covered over with earth and left for hours. In Yucatán and across Quintana Roo, people also call the dish simply pib, after the oven.
It belongs to Hanal Pixán, the food of the souls, in the last days of October and the first days of November. Families make it in quantity because it is shared: a portion left on the altar for the dead, portions carried to neighbors and godparents, portions eaten standing up in the kitchen with a cup of hot chocolate or atole. In Tulum, you will smell the fires in the barrios from about the 29th, and bakeries and taquerías sell it by the square for the few days either side of that date. It is one of the clearest markers of the season here, more than any decoration.
What makes it itself is the kol, a sauce of broth thickened with masa and coloured with achiote, poured into the shell with the meat so that the inside stays loose and wet while the outside dries and browns against the leaf. The flavor is sour orange and achiote, warm rather than hot, with the toasted corn and pork fat of the crust underneath. The chile, usually a whole x'catic or a habanero, goes in for perfume and is not meant to burn.
Two things go wrong at home. The first is to treat it like a crust, making it thin and neat; the masa should be a good centimeter thick, soft, and heavily enriched with lard, and it will crack a little, which is normal. The second is being timid with the kol. A mucbipollo with too little sauce bakes dry and crumbles when cut, and no amount of salsa afterward fixes it. An oven will not give you the smoke of a píib, but with the banana leaf sealed tightly, the result is honest, and it is how most town kitchens do it now anyway.
Ingredients
25 items · for 8For the meat and marinade
- 1 kg chicken thighs and drumsticks, bone in
- 500 g pork shoulder, cut into 4 cm chunks
- 120 g recado rojo (achiote paste)
- 180 ml sour orange juice (naranja agria)
- 6 garlic cloves, peeled
- 1 tsp dried Mexican oregano, toasted
- 2 tsp fine salt
- 1 white onion, halved
- 1.5 litres water
For the kol (red sauce)
- 1 litre reserved cooking broth
- 150 g fresh masa (about 3/4 cup, packed)
- 2 tbsp pork lard
- 1 tbsp recado rojo (achiote paste)
- 1 ripe tomato, chopped
- 1/2 white onion, finely chopped
- 1 whole chile x'catic or 1 whole habanero, unbroken
- 2 sprigs epazote
- Salt, about 1 tsp
For the masa shell
- 1.5 kg fresh masa for tortillas (or 600 g masa harina mixed with 750 ml warm water)
- 350 g pork lard, soft but not melted
- 2 tsp fine salt
- 1 tbsp recado rojo (achiote paste) dissolved in 2 tbsp warm water, for colour
For wrapping
- 6 to 8 large pieces of banana leaf, about 40 cm each
- Kitchen string
- A square metal or clay baking dish about 25 cm across and 7 cm deep
Step by step
10 stepsMarinate the meats
Blend the 120 g recado rojo with the sour orange juice, garlic, oregano and 2 tsp salt until smooth and the colour of brick. Rub it into the chicken and pork in a bowl, cover and leave at least 1 hour, or overnight in the fridge. The marinade should coat everything heavily rather than pool at the bottom.
Cook the meat and make broth
Scrape the meat and all the marinade into a pot with the halved onion and 1.5 litres water. Bring to a simmer and cook uncovered for 35 to 40 minutes, until the pork gives easily to a fork and the chicken is cooked through. Lift out the meat and let it cool enough to handle. Strain the broth and measure out 1 litre; it should be deep orange and well seasoned. Pull the chicken off the bone in large pieces and cut the pork into bite sized chunks.
Make the kol
Whisk the 150 g masa into 250 ml of the cold or cooled broth until no lumps remain. In a saucepan, melt the 2 tbsp lard, soften the onion and tomato for 5 minutes, then stir in the tablespoon of recado rojo. Add the remaining broth, the whole chile and the epazote, bring to a simmer, then pour in the masa slurry while stirring. Cook 8 to 10 minutes, stirring often, until it coats a spoon like pouring cream. It should stay loose enough to run off the spoon in a stream. Taste for salt, remove the chile and epazote, and set aside.
Soften the banana leaves
Wipe the leaves and pass each one over a gas flame or a hot dry comal for a few seconds a side, until the colour deepens and goes glossy and the leaf turns limp. This stops them splitting. Trim out the hard central rib. Line the baking dish with two or three leaves laid crosswise, shiny side up, with at least 15 cm overhanging all round so you can fold them over the top later.
Work the masa
Knead the masa with the lard, salt and dissolved recado rojo for about 5 minutes, until it is uniformly pale orange, soft, and slightly greasy to the touch. It should hold together when pressed in the palm without cracking at the edges. If it feels stiff, work in warm broth a spoonful at a time.
Press in the base
Take just over half the masa and press it into the lined dish with wet hands, covering the bottom and coming about 4 cm up the sides, roughly 1 cm thick throughout. Patch any thin spots. Keep the rim level so the lid will seal onto it.
Fill it
Arrange the chicken and pork over the base in an even layer. Pour over the kol, holding back about a cup, until the meat is almost submerged and the sauce sits just below the rim of the masa. It will look too wet. That is correct; the masa drinks it as it bakes.
Seal and wrap
Flatten the remaining masa between two sheets of plastic or on a damp cloth into a square slightly larger than the dish, about 1 cm thick, and lay it over the filling. Press the edges onto the rim of the base to close it, and smear a little of the reserved kol over the top. Fold the overhanging leaves over the lid, add another leaf on top if the parcel is not fully covered, and tie it with string in both directions.
Bake
Heat the oven to 200 C. Bake the parcel on a tray for 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes. Open the leaves for the last 15 minutes so the top dries and takes colour. It is ready when the crust is firm and lightly browned, the leaves at the edges are dark and papery, and a skewer pushed into the centre comes out hot.
Rest before cutting
Let it stand in its wrapping for 20 to 30 minutes off the heat. Cutting straight away sends the kol running out. Serve in thick squares, straight from the dish, with the leaf folded back and a habanero salsa or pickled red onion alongside.
Notes from the kitchen
- No sour orange: mix 120 ml orange juice with 40 ml lime juice and 20 ml grapefruit juice. It is close enough.
- Banana leaves are sold frozen in Asian and Latin shops and thaw in an hour. Without them, line the dish with baking parchment and cover the whole thing tightly with foil. The dish works, but the leaf aroma is a real part of the flavour, so use leaves if you can find them.
- Lard matters here. Rendered pork lard from a butcher gives the crust its texture and taste; commercial shortening makes it pasty.
- It keeps three days covered in the fridge and reheats well in squares, wrapped in foil, at 180 C for 20 minutes. It freezes baked, in portions, for a month.
This is the standard household version made across Yucatán and Quintana Roo for Hanal Pixán, written for a domestic oven rather than an earth píib.
This photograph was generated with artificial intelligence and may differ from the finished dish.