Carnitas a la Christy

Here's my experimental carnitas recipe.

1 pork butt roast, meat removed from the bone and chunked up. I am saving the bone, with the meat that was too much of a pain to remove, for adding to a soup stock next time I cook a chicken.

Chop one onion and several (I used 6 tiny ones) cloves of garlic in the food processor. Throw this into a big container or ziplock.

Pepper Paste Rub:

Remove seeds and stems and soak until soft:
6 or 7 dried ancho chiles
1 or 2 dried chipotle peppers
1 dried cascabel pepper

Juice the following into the food processor bowl:
1 orange
1 lime
1 grapefruit (I only used half this time. It was huge.)

Add soaked peppers to bowl and add the following spices:
Palmful of oregano
Smoked spanish paprika (because it was there)
Salt and pepper
Cumin

I also threw in a cutting of cilantro and a few chipotle in adobo because I really like the flavor of the adobo. This ought to make it pretty spicy.

This made plenty of paste, so I saved some back for next time.

Add paste to the onions and garlic in the ziplock. Add meat. Mush it around really well. Refrigerate overnight.

I cook this at 300° for several hours (~4) until the pork is yummy tender and falling apart. Pull it out of the oven and shred it up and throw it back in for a while. I cooked it for another hour and it crisped up so nicely. Yum! My plan was to shred part of this up for tacos and then add the rest to our ongoing super chili experiment, but it's so good on tortillas that I might have to wait and just do a regular carnitas for the chili.


Notes: I needed to be less afraid of salt when mixing the paste. I ended up salting the pork a lot when I did the shredding. I also will drain a lot of the fat off next time when I do the shredding. By the time it was done cooking, a lot of it had been absorbed.

Jim's verdict: Not spicy enough, but excellent flavor. I agree. It's extremely yummy, but wish they were hotter! We like it spicy. I rolled some up in a tortilla and threw on a few jalapenos and a dot or two of plain yogurt (my preference over sour cream) and nearly died it tasted so good.