Carnitas!

!CARNITAS!

 
















My first attempt at carnitas started as an innocent endeavor to make homemade tortillas for a recent batch of breakfast burritos. 

Charlie suggested that since I was making tortillas I should also make a dish to go with them. I guess the breakfast burritos don't count ;)

As with any recipe I make, I scoured the internet and all of my cookbooks to put together a recipe that I thought would turn out well. Of course, that means I took bit and pieces from about 7 different recipes and came up with the one below.

• 8# bone in pork butt
• 1 can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• enough bacon grease to cover the pork butt
• 2 tablespoon chili powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons salt, or more, to taste
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 8 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 red onion, quartered 
• 1 jalapeno diced with seeds
• 1 jalapeno chopped and seeded
• 1 large orange, juiced
• 2 limes, juiced

 

 

 

I found a lot of debate over: 

• the proper cooking temperature  
• whether to cook the pork butt whole or cut it up and sear it first  
• whether to cook in lard or stock/juice  
• the proper cooking vessel 

If you really want to read about the intricacies of pork butt cooking, here's the best breakdown I found: Carnitas Food Lab

I massaged the pork butt with bacon grease and then rubbed on the dry spice mix. Then I cooked the pork butt in my dutch oven at 200 degrees for roughly 6 hours. My goal was to catch it right when the thermometer read 155. 

 

However, I didn't get the pork but in the oven until 4pm. 

I was checking the dish at 2 hour intervals since this was an experiment. 

Somewhere around 9:30 I must have fallen asleep and when I pulled the pork but out at 10:30 it temped at 170. 

 
Despite slight overcooking, the meat was miraculously moist. 

I kept all of the cooking liquid/fat in a large pyrex overnight to add back to the pork (once it was shredded) the next day for added flavor and to reincorporate the fat.

 I CAN'T emphasize enough how important it is to keep the cooking liquid! 

The important part is to skim the fat and add it back to the meat. I added a good portion of the liquid back to the portions I put in the freezer as well.

 

I broiled the portions just before eating them to crisp them up a bit.

I divided the meat in to 1.5# portions. I ended up with 3 bags in the freezer and 2 nights of dinner. To be fair, we gorged ourselves the first night because it was so delicious!

 The next time I make this, and there WILL be a next time, I'd cut out one of the limes. Additionally, I'd rub the pork but down with the bacon grease and cover in the spices the night before I plan to cook it. I think doing so would allow the spices to come through more in the finished product.

For those that are interested, I'll share my experiment with homemade tortillas on Monday.