Slow-Cooked Carnitas with Minted Tomatillo Sauce
Easy, lip-smacking good, homemade, no lard, no Coca Cola, healthy carnitas are paired with a 3-ingredient minted tomatillo sauce.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 3 hours 40 minutes
- Total Time: 4 hours 10 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
- Cuisine: Mexican
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 T kosher salt
- 1 T chile powder
- 1 T Spanish smoked paprika
- 1 t dried oregano
- 1 t ground cumin
- 4 pound pork shoulder (also called pork butt – don’t ask me why!)
- 1 1/2 onions
- 1 orange
- 2 limes
- 8 cloves garlic
- 1 cinnamon stick, broken into pieces
- 3 bay leaves
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 pounds tomatillos, skins removed
- 1 – 2 jalapeno peppers (to taste)
- 1 large handful mint
- 1 large handful cilantro
- 4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
- 1 avocado, sliced for garnish (optional)
- 12 large tortillas (your choice of corn or flour)
- 3 limes, cut into wedges and halved
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 275 degrees. Mix the salt and the first four spices together in a small bowl. Set aside.
- Remove any layer of fat on the outside of your pork shoulder as well as any silver skin that is coating the shoulder. Depending on where you purchase your shoulder, your butcher may have already done this for you. Cut the shoulder into 2″ pieces. Coat the pieces with the spice rub and lay out in a 13 x 9 x 2″ baking pan.
- Cut the oranges and limes in half and squeeze the juice over the meat. Burrow the squeezed orange and lime rinds in between the chunks of pork. Peel and quarter one onion and place it between the pieces of pork. Scatter the garlic cloves, pieces of cinnamon stick and the bay leaves around the pieces of pork. Pour the olive oil over the meat. Cover tightly with tin foil and slow cook until the meat is tender and can be easily separated with a fork, about 3 1/2 hours.
- While the carnitas are cooking make the minted tomatillo sauce. Place the tomatillos and jalapenos in a broiling pan and broil until the tops begin to blacken. Remove from the broiler, turn over and broil the other side. Some tomatillos may blacken sooner than others. Remove them from the heat as they blacken and set aside to cool, saving any juice the tomatillos have released during the broiling process.
- Remove the hard stem from each tomatillo and transfer to a food processor or blender. Remove the skin from the jalapeno, slice it in half and remove the seeds. Add some of the jalapeno to the blender according to your preference for heat. I start with half a jalapeno, taste and adjust. Season with kosher salt and pepper and process until smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings. Refrigerate salsa until ready to serve.
- Finely chop the remaining half onion and a handful of cilantro together. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
- When the carnitas are fork tender, remove from the oven and shred into bite-size chunks with two forks. At this point the carnitas can be refrigerated until ready to serve.
- When ready to serve, turn on the oven broiler and spread the shredded carnitas over the pan. Place 4″ under the broiler and cook to crisp the edges, about 3 minutes. Remove from the broiler, turn and return to the broiler for about 3 more minutes.
- Serve carnitas with warm tortillas and garnish with minted tomatillo sauce, chopped onions and cilantro, avocado slices and crumbled feta cheese.
Notes
If you only have one oven, you may want to broil the tomatillos while you are assembling the carnita pan.