Pork Carnitas – easy to make, full of flavor, and incredibly versatile – great in sandwiches, burritos, tacos, omelettes, salads, you name it.
Really good Pork Carnitas is always a favorite – spicy, flavorful – and it is so versatile. With this batch, I’ve already had some just by itself – but as you see in the photo, I served it in a small tostada piled with cheese, refried beans, lettuce, and tomato. It makes an ideal lunch.
This starts with a pork loin, spices, chipotle peppers, and orange and lime juice. It’s cooked for 8 hours in a slow cooker. Then you shred it with forks. At this stage, the pork is soft and pale in color. The way I like to serve it is fried up in a skillet so it has crispy edges on it. Now the trade-off here is that frying it up like that can also dry it out. So what I do is save all the liquid (about 2 cups) and add that liquid back in as I fry it. And I always save some liquid to add at the end of frying so I can be sure it is moist when I serve it and it also has crispy edges. That liquid is packed with flavor. It also has semi-solid parts – leave it all in. It’s all good and adds flavor. Note that carnitas is often browned in the oven until crisp on the outside. That works very well, but I just chose to brown the edges after shredding in a skillet.
Another thing – this freezes very well. To freeze it for maximum quality over time, pack the shredded pork tightly in plastic tubs and pour some of the liquid in. The idea is to eliminate all air pockets. Then freeze the remaining liquid in a separate tub. I do the same thing with pulled pork. Carnitas and pulled pork are similar, but pulled pork is typically made with a pork shoulder butt instead of pork loin
This recipe is great one to have at hand – hope you enjoy it!
- 2½ to 3 lb pork tenderloin
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 2 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp oregano
- 1 tsp dark chili powder
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp onion powder
- 2 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, finely chopped (2-3 tbsp)
- 2 tbsp lime juice (about 1 lime)
- ½ cup orange juice
- Place pork in 6 quart slow cooker and sprinkle with spices. Combine chiles, lime juice and orange juice and add.
- Cook on low for 8 hours or high for about 4 hours. When done, pork should be easily shreddable.
- Use two forks to shred pork and save liquid in separate container. Fry shredded pork in skillet to brown edges, adding some of the liquid (about ¼ cup liquid to 1 cup shredded pork).
- Note: Alternative method is to shred all the pork, spread out on a baking sheet, and broil 3-5 inches from the broiler for 5 minutes or until just getting crispy. Remove and add some of the liquid to moisten. I tend to use this method if I'm serving the entire batch at once.
- Serve on sandwiches, in tacos, tostadas, on salads, however you want. Great taco fixings to serve with it are onions, queso fresco, salsa, cheese, guacamole, sour cream, black olives, chopped tomatoes, or whatever else you prefer.
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