Carnitas

Carnitas—Spanish for “little meats”—are an iconic dish from Mexico that every home cook should have in their repertoire. Looking only at the time commitment involved, carnitas can seem intimidating, but I’m here to show you that, with proper planning, anyone can properly cook carnitas with very little active time.

Carnitas, very basically, are pieces of pork shoulder marinated and slow-roasted, then pulled, cubed, or shredded, and then fried, whatever presentation is chosen. The traditional recipe calls for several quarts of melted lard and water, but I have come up with a method that is easier, safer, and much less calorie-dense, and thus much more approachable to the average home cook. (Although, for anyone who wants the original recipe, it would call for the pork to be submerged in a mixture of water and lard together with oranges and spices. The pork will braise in the water while it gradually evaporates, and then fry in its own fat—the lard—once the water is gone.)

This recipe needs at least 48, if not 72, hours of prior planning, almost all of which will be necessary but inactive time. Days before you want to make your carnitas, go out and buy a bone-in pork shoulder (also called a Boston Butt); this roast will probably be somewhere between 8 and 12 pounds, bone included. You’ll also need 4 to 6 navel oranges for a roast that size. Don’t forget a few bay leaves as well! The combination of the flavors of pork, oranges, and bay leaves is the signature touch of the carnitas!

Zest, then juice, all the oranges into a container large enough to hold the roast and collect any drippings. (I like my 8-quart Dutch oven for such a task.) Add a tablespoon of soy sauce, and an equal quantity of water as there was juice to the marinating container. Do not discard the spent orange halves; place them in the marination container. Liberally season the roast with salt, pepper, and the dried herbs of your choice, which might include any or all of the following: oregano, dill, thyme, basil, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, chili flakes, and, of course, the aforementioned bay leaves. Season more heavily than you think you need to: the Boston Butt is a very large cut that needs to be seasoned well.

Now, turn your focus to the onions. I like using at least 1 yellow onion per orange. Find the stem end—the end opposite the root—and cut it off, creating a flat surface. Stabilize the onion on that flat surface with the root facing up and cut down, separating the onion into two halves. Peel off the skin and the outermost layer. Then, cut the onion into strips about an inch wide, almost fully separating, except where held together by the root. Finally, cut the root off. Repeat this process for each of your onions and place them with the marinade and the roast. Make sure the onions get some of the seasoning too—massage the seasoning into the pork and the onions by hand to ensure even coverage. Cover all this and place it in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 days.

Salt will draw out a significant amount of liquid from the onions and the oranges by osmosis over the several days that the pork is marinating, so at the end of the marinating process, there will be significantly more liquid than before. This is exactly what we need. On the day you want the carnitas, preheat your oven to 300 Fahrenheit. Once the oven has come up to temperature—a deliberately low one at that— uncover the roast and place it in the oven for 3 and a half hours.

After 3 and a half hours separate the pork from the onions, oranges, and sauce in the pan. Transfer the pork to another plate to rest. Discard the oranges and return the sauce to the heat in a different, smaller pan, initially over medium-low. Gradually reduce the sauce by at least half.

In the meantime, cube, shred, or pull the pork off the bone. Then coat the bottom of the original braising vessel in a thin film of oil—I use avocado oil when I sear— and sear the carnitas, probably in batches, until a good crust has developed by means of the Maillard browning reaction. If you have space in your freezer, save the bone; it will keep for several months and can become the foundation of a great pork stock. 

Sear as much as you can at a time without overcrowding the surface of the pan, keeping all the pork in a single layer. Crowding the pan so much that the pork stacks into multiple layers will steam rather than sear it, and no new crust will form, and anything that might have formed will be dissolved away.

Once the pork has all been seared, combine it with the glaze which has been reduced, so that the glaze thoroughly coats the pork.   

Carnitas are especially commonly served as the protein in tacos, and that was indeed our first application of choice when I prepared this recipe a few weeks ago. Because carnitas are so rich, it is quite a good idea to pair them with something acidic to cut the richness of the pork. For this reason, pairing pickled onions with carnitas is very common. I have already covered how to pickle onions on this blog, so I’ll simply leave a link to that post here.