Carnitas Revisited

Well... last week I tried my hand at carnitas and I was pleased. But I started thinking about how easy it was and how much better I could probably get them to taste had I put a little more effort into them...

The search was on. Turns out when you type "Best carnitas recipe,"" into Google that it pulls up A LOT! But one of them caught my eye and I decided to try it.

INGREDIENTS:

4-5 lb. Pork shoulder roast
Dried Thyme, Salt, and Pepper (to taste)
six garlic cloves cut in half
1/2 cup milk

First you want to cut about a dozen small slits into the roast and push the garlic cloves into them. Then rub the roast with the thyme, salt, and pepper. Then it all comes back to the trusty crock pot--- plop that roast right in. Then you just plug in the crock pot, turn it on low, and put some water in the crock pot. How much water depends on the size of crock pot, but put enough in that the roast is at least 3/4 covered in water.

I left for work at this time, so the roast cooked for about 11 hours... but obviously it was probably done way earlier than that, so feel free to cook it for less.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Remove the roast from the crock pot and discard the fat, and shred the meat- placing all the meat in a roasting pan, or you can use a metal 9 x 11 inch cake pan (that's what I used- my roasting pan is SO HUGE and I don't really care to work with it much). Drizzle the meat with the 1/2 cup milk and stir meat so that it all gets coated and place in the preheated oven.

Now, get a sauce pan and strain the remaining juices from the crockpot into the sauce pan. Bring the liquid to a boil. The recipe stated to reduce it down to about 2 cups (this will take a varied amount of time, depending on how much water you added, but probably about 45 minutes). I ended up reducing mine to probably about 1 cup, and it made it a bit thicker, which I liked. This will be poured over the meat at a later time. Feel free to skim off any extra fat that might form during the reduction process.

Every 10 minutes or so check the meat and give it a stir. You will keep cooking it until the meat is lightly browned and no milk is on the bottom of the pan. When you stir it, be sure to stir in the drippings that are sticking to the bottom of the pan- they are loaded with flavor. This process takes about 40 - 60 minutes, depending on your pan and oven. If you find that your oven tends to cook fast or hot, then adjust the temperature a little lower, you want it to brown slowly.

After the meat is browned, and your reduction is ready, drizzle about 1 cup of the reduction over the meat, stir, and place back into the oven to cook for about 15 more minutes, checking and stirring at around 10 minutes.

When it's done it should be nice and brown, with some edges being a bit crispy. Serve with your fave taco toppings (fresh chopped onion, tomato, cilantro, avocado, cheese, sour cream, etc.) on a corn tortilla and you've got yourself a DELISH dinner.

This recipe was INCREDIBLE and it is so worth the extra time to cook it. What I loved about this recipe was that as long as you had the milk then it didn't really require any extra ingredients since you just use the juice from the crockpot. The meat is still tender and juicy, but with some of the crispy edges... wow... tastebuds rejoice. Just remember not to rush it, that is the key to this one I think. With a little patience it is easily duplicatable (not sure that's a word!).

Until next time- cook on cookin' cuppies!