Carnitas

From the Mexican Cooking thread

Did someone ask for a carnitas recipe?!? Here's mine, and it's pretty good if I do say so myself.

Ingredients

The Meat

• 2.5 lbs Boston butt pork roast
• 2 tbsb. kosher salt
• 1 tbsp. black peppercorns, ground
• 1 tbsp. garlic powder
• 1 tbsp. achiote (annato)
• 1 tbsp. cayenne pepper
• 2 tbsp. Mexican oregano
• 1/2 tbsp. onion powder
• 1 small white onion, sliced thinly

The Tacos

• 3 dozen corn tortillas
• 3 cups white onion, finely diced
• 2 bunches cilantro, washed and chopped roughly
• Salsa of your choice

Optional

• Diced jalapenos
• Avocado slices

Method

• Make a rub from the dry ingredients listed under The Meat section above and liberally coat the meat. Place in a slow cooker and cover with the onions. I'd forgotten to add my oregano to the rub so I just put it on top of the onions this time and it worked fine. I get asked a lot so let me just say up front that no, you don't need to add any liquid to the cooker. Plenty of juice is going to come out of the meat and sliced onions.

• Cook the meat on high until it's cooked, about five hours. By this time, it will be frying in its own fat as previously mentioned in the thread. As you can see, the meat will be practically falling apart by this point.

• The next step is to remove the meat from the cooker and shred using a couple of forks or whichever other method you use to shread meat.

• I can't find my photos of this next step, so just close your eyes and draw pictures with your mind! What you do is transfer the shredded pork to a cookie sheet or pie tin and place it under a broiler until the tips and edges start to crisp up. Finally, transfer the delicious fattycrispy meat to tortillas, garnish with cilantro, white onion, your choice of salsa, and enjoy. They should be served with lime wedges because a shot of lime juice just makes a taco. Avocado is good on them too, I just didn't have any on the day I took these pics.

Finished Product

Here's a couple of shots of the finished product; in the first I used some crazy red party tortillas I found at the store, if you're wondering what's going on with that.

Anyhoo, now you know how to make carnitas. I hope that you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed cooking and eating these carnitas. I also make some pretty good tacos al pastor, red salsa, and green salsa if anyone wants those recipes.