Monday

Recipes: Citrusy Carnitas


Having lived in both California and Texas, my taste buds have an acute hankering for Mexican food more often than not. This is a problem now that I'm living in Brisbane, where Mexican food is just now trending in a big way and will no doubt take a while before it's done really well. This means I cook a lot of it at home, which is actually a wonderful excuse to play around with my favourite Mexican dishes.

One of them is carnitas, which means "little meats" in Spanish, and is typically made by braising a well-marbled cut of pork for a few hours. Pork shoulder works for me. I usually slow cook chunks of it in a spicy salsa bath, but I decided to try something different this time, which, funnily enough, is probably the more common way of making them.


Freshly squeezed orange and lime juice combined with a few other ingredients is all you need to make succulent, flavourful carnitas—as long as you don't break the cardinal rule by trimming the fat. That would be a huge mistake as we finish braising the pork in its own fatty goodness. If there isn't enough, the pork won't be as tender. (Traditional carnitas call for lard, but I'm all for the no added fat option.)

Carnitas

1 kilogram pork shoulder
3 limes
2 oranges
5 garlic cloves, crushed with the side of a knife then minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili flakes
1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
water, as needed


1. Cut the shoulder into chunks and place in a Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot.


2. Squeeze the juice from the oranges and limes and pour over the pork.


3. Stir in the garlic, chili flakes, salt and cumin.


4. Add water until the pork is just covered.


5. Bring to a boil before dropping the heat to low and simmering for two hours. If the liquid looks like it's going to evaporate before the two hours are up, add a little more water. 


6. After two hours turn the heat up to medium high and cook another 45 minutes, stirring and turning the meat occasionally until all the liquid has evaporated and the pork is left sizzling in the rendered fat. When the pieces have browned the carnitas are done. Shred the pork or cut into smaller pieces. 


I usually serve carnitas with black beans, warmed tortillas, and homemade salsa and guacamole. This time though a healthy green bean salad with a Mexican twist (from the food blog Simply Recipes) was added to the spread.   


If you don't have any tortillas, don't worry. In fact, you don't even need to use them if you do. I actually preferred the carnitas without them this time, as a tortilla would have slightly concealed the beautiful flavour and texture of the meat. 


Spoon on a little salsa to taste and dig in!

1 comment:

  1. Wow. Could you please make that for me when I come to Brisbane? It looks perfectly melt in the mouth
    heaven.

    ReplyDelete

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