Thursday, July 9, 2015

Pork Carnitas

On Friday we have a pot luck at work. Tacos or Mexican whatever but I wanted something more than taco hamburger meat so I had a nice 5 pound pork butt in the freezer ready for a little action.

Most of the recipes I found had some similarities, a citrus juice, garlic and cumin.
I brined the pork roast overnight in the fridge after it thawed in a basic 1/4 c salt to 4 cup water brine.

I put a good glug of orange juice in the crock pot along with 2 medium onions cut into petals, 4 cloves of crushed garlic, a jalapeno  and the juice from 2 limes.

I made a rub of 1 teaspoon oregano, 2 teaspoons of cumin and 2 tablespoons of olive oil and rubbed the roast before placing the pot,  fat side up. I set the pot to low for 10 hours and left for work.

The roast was falling apart tender when I came home so I picked the fat off and shredded the meat.

I tasted the drippings and removed some of the fat. they were awful and a little bitter, so I added a cup of them to a sauce pan with more orange juice, salt and about 3 tablespoons of brown sugar to offset the bitterness from the juice. A bit more oregano, chili flakes and chipotle  powder  rounded out the flavor and took off the bitter edge. I poured this over the meat again.

Normally I would 'fry' a bit of this in a skillet to color it before serving but as is will be fine for Friday.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds delicious - I love how you play with the spices to change the flavor of the sauce! yum!

    ReplyDelete

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