Prior to the pandemic, virtually every Friday night we were in town, you could find my wife and me at our local Mexican restaurant run by a family that really made it a special place. Most visits, we would start with their fresh guacamole prepared tableside and then share an entree. One of my favorites there is carnitas.
I don't profess to be any sort of expert on Mexican cooking, but I consider their carnitas to be moderately authentic. The pork is in fairly large chunks, maybe three inches or more on a side, and has an incredible sear on it. Another authentic restaurant across town serves virtually same dish. Both serve with tortillas, fresh onion, lettuce, lime and fresh avocado.
I had a little chunk of pork butt in the freezer, weighing about 1.75 pounds, so I decided it would be fun to try my hand at carnitas. Googling for carnitas recipes gives a mix of wildly different approaches. It seems lots of people start with pulled pork and crisp it up in a pan. Recipes that look a bit more like what I get at the places I like appear to start with what seems like poaching pork butt chunks in a mix of broth, citrus and lard, followed by frying in lard. There is even one old post here in that vein, although in the end it winds up as a carnitas burrito with the pork looking somewhat pulled after frying.
Being lazy, I decided not to go too far out of my comfort zone and start with smoking rather than poaching. I also don't have any lard on hand. In thinking through what I could do for the frying step, I realized I have some Crisco around. A quick look online told me that the smoke point for Crisco is 490. That explains why Grandma's home fries were always so good and crispy: you can fry at super high heat levels with this stuff.
I also had no idea how far to cook the butt chunk before cubing and frying. I randomly chose 190. I used a commercial rub with salt that my daughter had given me for Christmas (Habanero Hitman, it turns out to be pretty good) and put the butt on with the controller set for 275. Here it is at 190 internal:

I chose cutting into smaller cubes that wouldn't require further breaking apart to go into tacos. I hit the cubes with a mixture of lime juice and orange juice, along with zest.

And here we are in the Lodge, which I got to over 450 before dropping the cubes in (in two batches):

And here we have the beautiful fried chunks, which got more orange juice and zest:

For the tacos, I went with some Napa cabbage and chipotle crema.

These were so much fun to make and turned out really well. I'm definitely going to keep fooling around with this approach.
I intentionally didn't put this up as a full-blown recipe, because I think of it as more an exploration of techniques. Toward that end, what do you think of when you think carnitas? How do you like to prepare them? How are they prepared at your favorite restaurant?
I don't profess to be any sort of expert on Mexican cooking, but I consider their carnitas to be moderately authentic. The pork is in fairly large chunks, maybe three inches or more on a side, and has an incredible sear on it. Another authentic restaurant across town serves virtually same dish. Both serve with tortillas, fresh onion, lettuce, lime and fresh avocado.
I had a little chunk of pork butt in the freezer, weighing about 1.75 pounds, so I decided it would be fun to try my hand at carnitas. Googling for carnitas recipes gives a mix of wildly different approaches. It seems lots of people start with pulled pork and crisp it up in a pan. Recipes that look a bit more like what I get at the places I like appear to start with what seems like poaching pork butt chunks in a mix of broth, citrus and lard, followed by frying in lard. There is even one old post here in that vein, although in the end it winds up as a carnitas burrito with the pork looking somewhat pulled after frying.
Being lazy, I decided not to go too far out of my comfort zone and start with smoking rather than poaching. I also don't have any lard on hand. In thinking through what I could do for the frying step, I realized I have some Crisco around. A quick look online told me that the smoke point for Crisco is 490. That explains why Grandma's home fries were always so good and crispy: you can fry at super high heat levels with this stuff.
I also had no idea how far to cook the butt chunk before cubing and frying. I randomly chose 190. I used a commercial rub with salt that my daughter had given me for Christmas (Habanero Hitman, it turns out to be pretty good) and put the butt on with the controller set for 275. Here it is at 190 internal:
I chose cutting into smaller cubes that wouldn't require further breaking apart to go into tacos. I hit the cubes with a mixture of lime juice and orange juice, along with zest.
And here we are in the Lodge, which I got to over 450 before dropping the cubes in (in two batches):
And here we have the beautiful fried chunks, which got more orange juice and zest:
For the tacos, I went with some Napa cabbage and chipotle crema.
These were so much fun to make and turned out really well. I'm definitely going to keep fooling around with this approach.
I intentionally didn't put this up as a full-blown recipe, because I think of it as more an exploration of techniques. Toward that end, what do you think of when you think carnitas? How do you like to prepare them? How are they prepared at your favorite restaurant?
Comment