Chilaquiles Sinaloenses con Chilorio

This is Sinaloa. Not the generic chilaquiles you find in every Mexico City fonda, the ones drowning in salsa verde and topped with shredded chicken. Chilaquiles sinaloenses come with chilorio, the dark, vinegar-cured shredded pork from Mocorito, and a fried egg, and frijoles puercos on the side. That is breakfast in Culiacan, in Mazatlan, in Los Mochis. Cada estado, su propia cocina.

Chilorio is not seasoned pork. It is Mocorito's most famous export, a centuries-old preservation art that took pork shoulder, simmered it down to its own rendered fat, and married it with toasted chile ancho and pasilla and a half cup of apple cider vinegar. The vinegar is the technique. Before refrigeration, chilorio could ride a horse for three days in a clay jar and arrive sweeter than when it left. The town of Mocorito has guarded this preparation since the 19th century, and a senora there will tell you the same thing I am telling you: half a cup of vinegar, manteca for frying, and patience.

The chips have to be right. Day-old tortillas, fried crisp but still flexible at the edge. Bathed in salsa roja made from guajillo and arbol, fried in lard until the fat separates, then tossed for 60 seconds and not a moment longer. A Sinaloan chip should still bite back. Soggy chilaquiles are a Mexico City problem, not a noroeste one.

My mother was from Jalisco, not Sinaloa. But the page in her notebook for chilorio came from a woman she met on a bus to Los Mochis in 1979, written in pencil with the line 'no skimp on the vinegar' underlined twice. I have made it the way that woman wrote it for thirty years. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.