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2013 Cooking Club Week 30: [An epically over-long ode to] Carnitas
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01-08-2013 11:31pm#1[This is a little early up because I'm not around tomorrow to post]
Carnitas are my favorite thing to eat. When someone asks me what my last meal would be I generally fib and say my Mam’s lasagna [which, Mammy, should you be reading is genuinely amazing with the perfect ratio of burnt cheese to goo. Should the prison kitchen be unable to sort out carnitas you’ll be summoned there there sharpish with the mince] because I have this feeling that it’s a bit wanky to name something you make yourself. Carnitas are little chunks of slow cooked, salty, spiced pork which are both melty & crispy and are eaten in fajitas/burritos/tacos or straight out of the oven dish like a savage.
I eat carnitas with a very simple guacamole (you will look at the recipe and go ‘That’s just a mashed avocado you lazy wench’ and you will be right) and pico de gallo, which is a simple salsa made with chopped onion, tomatoes, chilli & coriander so that’s what I’m including ‘recipes’ for here but you can eat them with any salsa or topping you’d like really. We have sour cream & cheese as well, for the good of our bones you see. Not because we’re savages.
I make carnitas a lot because if I’m cooking for a group of people so I can over-feed everyone on a serious budget & without having horrible ‘is this going to be nice’ and I cook them if it's just the 2 of us because it’s the dinner that keeps on giving (examples to follow).
Oh - and because similarities are going to be pretty noticeable straight off the bat, my recipe is lifted wholly from David Lebovitz’s blog. It’s where I first came across carnitas and it’s the only recipe I’ve ever used because I love it like I loved Brendan Fraser in 1996
I’ve made 2 seperate posts here - shopping & cooking. If you’re ok on where to find the ingredients you can skip past most of the shopping post!41
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- 1 Pork Shoulder
- Salt
- Chili Powder - 1 tsp
- Ancho Chili Powder (if you can’t get this, don’t worry about it) - 1 tsp
- Ground Cumin - 1 tsp
- Cinnamon Stick - 1
- Avocadoes - Half an avocado per person (or more depending on your budget and how much of a guac-fiend your invitees are)
- Tomatoes
- Onion
- Coriander (fresh not the spice)
- Garlic - 3 cloves, sliced
- Limes - 2 or 3
- Sour cream
- Cheese
- Oil for frying (probably not olive oil because you don’t really want that taste in here)
- Tortillas - wheat or corn
- You won’t eat this but you do need a large oven proof pot or dish, I use a 5l one
I go into detail on where to buy things & what to ask for below that’s probably entirely unnecessary for most people. I am a nervous shopper at times so I’m writing this for other people who freeze up in butchers if they have to ask for something they can’t immediately see and come home with a pork chop and a tub of curry sauce. Definitely feel free to scroll on down to the bit with the cooking instructions if this starts boring the pants off you. [If you’d like pointers on where to pick up any of this in Dublin City Centre or Dublin 8 just shout. I had them added in below but it was getting a bit epic in length]
The Piggy
The pork of choice for carnitas is shoulder. It’s a cut I don’t think I’d ever had before I made them myself & I am lucky to have a selection of butchers near me that always have pork shoulders in stock. Even if you have a scoot around a butchers and don’t see one most butchers will cut you a shoulder but if it’s not something they normally sell it might be best to give them a little notice. I say this because I’ve arrived into my local butcher on a day I had intended to eat a lot of pork and they brought out this tiny little shoulderette of pork that was all they had left and I had to do without. That Saturday sucked. It’s been my experience that if a butcher doesn’’t normally sell pork shoulder it’ll be a slightly more expensive place to buy it because they won’t have a clue what they should charge. Good places to pick up pork shoulders tend to be- Butchers you could clearly imagine your granny shopping in
- Butchers that Eastern European folk frequent
You’ll pay between €10 & €13 for around 2kg of meat. I get my butchers to take the rind from the shoulder, take out the bone & cut it into big chunks (normally 4). You can do all of this at home but it is FIDDLY and you will require a sharp knife and some patience and for all children to be removed from the house so they won’t have to hear you call a pork shoulder names.
The Herbs, Limes & Spices
I pick up all of my herbs & spices in Middle Eastern supermarkets because that’s where you get the best value. It galls me to pay €1.19 for a baggy with 10 little stalks of coriander in Tesco. Having said that, Irish supermarkets are SO much better than they used to be, the only item on my list that you probably won’t find in them is ancho chili powder. (Tesco & Marks & Spencer sell entire ancho chilis that you could..powder...somehow..) I’ve only ancho chili powder in Fallon & Byrne in Dublin and actually just get a friend who lives in the states to post me mine. If you can’t get your hands on ancho chili powder just leave it out, I’ve made this many times without it and it’s still great. In fact I've made it before with a sachet of Old El Paso fajita powder and it was smashing. I have a guilty love for that stuff. <rubs some into gums>
The Avocadoes
You need ripe avocadoes. If you’re not an avocado savage you might not be aware that an unripe one is rubbery and chewy and just a little green bad time altogether. This means either buying a few days in advance or buying those slightly more expensive ‘Eat Today’ ones. To see if one is ripe you want to be able to make a little dent in it with your thumb without too much pressure. If you accidentally pop your thumb through the skin it’s way too ripe and if it’s rock solid it’s no good for eating (but can be ripened by leaving it in a paper bag with a banana, just maybe not in time for your dinner).
Wraps/Tortillas
You can use wheat or corn wraps here (or eat on a bed of salad/in iceberg lettuce leaves if you’re off the carbs, I do that sometimes and it’s really very good) but buy the smallest ones you can find. The reason for this is that you want to be able to eat as much pork as you can and stuffing yourself with an bin lid sized wrap gets in the way of that. I personally buy the wraps in the ic guys from Saburrito in the Epicurean Food Hall in Dublin (corn tortillas for soft tacos - 4.95 for 72 and they freeze beautifully) but you can buy small Old El Paso wraps, labelled ‘Flour Tortillas’ rather than ‘Flour Tortilla Wraps’ I think.0 -
Pork
Your pork shoulder is going to take 3.5 hours in the oven initially followed by an extra 20 minutes of shredding & crisping up time. First things first, pre-heat it to 180 degrees.
Sprinkle the meat with salt (the original recipe I had said to salt it and refridgerate for 1-3 days but I just never have time for that so I just season right before cooking) and heat a tablespoon or so of oil in your pot.
Brown your pork chumks on all sides.
When all your meat is browned drain any oil from the pot and add in your meat, chili powders, cumin, garlic and enough water to come around ⅔ of the way up the meat. I put in a chipotle and some adobo as well but you don't have to, just personal preference. Stick it in the oven and every so often during turn the meat in the liquid so it can absorb all the flavours.
After 3.5 hours or when you can easily shred the meat with a fork take the pot from the oven & remove the meat from the liquid onto a large oven tray
Shred the pork into chunks of about 5 inches, you can wait till it’s cool enough to do it with your hands and employ the power of 2 forks.
Pour a couple of ladles of the cooking liquid over it & toss the meat
Stick it back into the oven till the pork is crispy and brown on the surface, I normally leave it in for 5-10 minutes.
Guacamole & Pico de Gallo
Once your pork is in the oven it’s time to make your guacamole & pico de gallo. You can do this right before you eat them as well but the flavours develop so nicely if you give them a few hours to sit. I make my guacamole as follows - scoop avocado flesh out into a bowl, squeeze over lime juice (about half a lime per avocado but it’s really to taste, you might like yours less limey than I like mine, add a little, taste and add more if you’d like), sprinkle with salt and mash. Taste & add more seasonings if you want. The lime will stop your guacamole going a nasty shade of brown.
For pico de gallo, I use the following quantities
- 6 tomatoes
-half an onion
- small bunch of coriander
- juice of one lime
- salt
scoop the seeds out from your tomatoes and dice, dice your onions, chili (if using, I didn’t here because my partner & I have entirely different tolerances for heat and he prefers wuss pico de gallo), chop your coriander, stick into a bowl, squeeze over lime. Then mix well. Cover the pico de gallo & guacamole with cling film and put into the fridge till dinner.
When your pork is done, warm your wraps and serve everything in big bowls for people to serve themselves.
Leftovers
Any leftovers make great quesidillas and are also fried in a dry pan till crispy and eaten as part of a salad or in lettuce wraps.0 -
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You do your shopping where I do my shopping
~stalks~
Anyway! Looks wonderful and I will definitely be trying it out. Another northside supplier of pork shoulder is JCs in Swords - €7.99, they weigh about the 2 kg mark and the butchers there will happily bone, skin, chop and do anything else you need done to the meat.0 -
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April O Neill wrote: »What cheese do you use?
I'm usually a boring old cheddar girl, but I think it would be too overpowering for this..
Boring old strong-as-I-can-get-it cheddar
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Got ma pork shoulder This one is heeeeoooooge! Piggy was obviously pumping iron. I think I'll have to cut it in two. I got the butcher to de-bone it for me as I didn't see any already done. It did cost about the same as you suggested though, so maybe the pic is deceiving.
Now to gather up the rest of the ingredients....0 -
Got ma pork shoulder This one is heeeeoooooge! Piggy was obviously pumping iron. I think I'll have to cut it in two. I got the butcher to de-bone it for me as I didn't see any already done. It did cost about the same as you suggested though, so maybe the pic is deceiving.
Now to gather up the rest of the ingredients....
Where did you get yours? Pork shoulder used to be freely available in every supermarket in the UK, but I've struggled to find it in Cork.
I LOVE the write up, Miss F. I think my OH will love this, and I will too once I go wussy easy on the heat! I might try cooking it in the slow cooker. 0 -
Where did you get yours? Pork shoulder used to be freely available in every supermarket in the UK, but I've struggled to find it in Cork.
I LOVE the write up, Miss F. I think my OH will love this, and I will too once I go wussy easy on the heat! I might try cooking it in the slow cooker.
I went through all the butchers in the English Market and the only shoulder I saw on display was in Ashley's on the grand parade side. Took them about 2 mins to remove the bone for me and cost €12. They had other unusual cuts there so I thought I had the best shot with them 0 -
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What on earth is a breakfast quesayokie!?1
It's where I get up the morning after, forgetting about the previous nights meat sweats, fully intending on having toast or somesuch and spy the remainders of carnitas. Little oil (tiny amount) in a pan, put in one tortilla, top with cheese, little/lots of pork then another tortilla on top then fry on both sides till the tortillas are crispy and the cheese is melted. Eaten with remaining guac or salsa or bbq sauce or somesuch. It's not *technically* a breakfast food but that's never stopped me
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I went to Bresnan's butchers in the English Market today to get some shoulder. It was a very confusing transaction, with two guys serving us and a few other people at the same time. We got a chunk of boneless shoulder and the butcher threw in some scored skin as extra. I was feeling a bit miffed as we got charged €17 and I was feeling ripped off. When we got home, though, and my OH put down the bags, I realised there was a LOT of pork there. We'd asked for 2kg but I guess in the confusion we got the whole fecking shoulder. It weighed in at nearly 4kg. All for only €17! At a conservative estimate, that's 16 dinners worth, so just over €1 per meal. We'll be having a lot of carnitas and pulled pork over the next couple of weeks!
Will report back once it's made. 0 -
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a bully-herb is all it is 
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