Barbacoa Sundays

Barbacoa is what weekends taste like in central Mexico. On Friday, whole lamb is seasoned, wrapped in roasted maguey leaves and lowered into a stone-lined pit over oak coals; a pot beneath catches the drippings with chickpeas and rice, and the earth is sealed over everything. Overnight the meat steams in agave perfume until it surrenders entirely, and from dawn on Saturday and Sunday the pits are opened: families queue at roadside barbacoyas across Hidalgo - the tradition's heartland - and at market stalls throughout the capital for tacos of shredded lamb on double tortillas, the crackly fatty panza for the brave, and cups of the consome that gathered below, red-tinted, rich and restorative. Salsa borracha, made with pulque, is the canonical companion; so is a morning pulque itself. Restaurants serve barbacoa all week, but the pit-and-dawn version is a Saturday-Sunday sacrament, and driving the Pachuca highway past smoking earth ovens is half the pleasure.

What you actually see

• The pit opening - maguey leaves peeled from steaming lamb at dawn.
• The consome - the drippings broth ladled from beneath the meat.
• Taco assembly - shredded lamb, cilantro, onion, salsa borracha.
• The highway barbacoyas - smoke plumes along the road to Pachuca.

When to go

Saturday and Sunday mornings, the earlier the better - the best pits sell out by early afternoon. Hidalgo's roadside institutions reward the drive; city markets serve the same ritual nearer the hotel.

Honest expectations

Ordering is by the kilo or the taco amid cheerful chaos - point, ask, and trust the queue's judgment. The famous places have famous lines. Consome first, tacos second is the local order of operations.

Nearby

Pachuca's photography museum, the Prismas Basalticos and Real del Monte's pasty-mining heritage extend a Hidalgo barbacoa run.