Crispy crunchy little bits of spicy pork. Life doesn’t get much better than that. Now traditionally pork carnitas is made by cooking pieces of pork butt or ham in copious amounts of it’s own fat for hours until the meat is perfectly tender. Then, the meat is removed and the temperature of the oil is turned up so it gets smoking hot and the meat is returned. This gives the meat a luscious inside and a crispy exterior that is nothing short of magical.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a kitchen in my house capable of handling the heating of numerous pounds of lard. Nor do I want to deal with the hassle of messing with gallons of hot lard. You have to pick your battles people! Using this recipe can get you pretty close to traditional carnitas with minimal effort and trouble.

Carnitas Recipe

5 lbs. Pork Shoulder – cut into pieces
1 Medium Onion – cut into chunks
2 Limes – quartered
1 Jalepino – sliced
4 Ancho chilies – sliced, seeds and tops removed
3/4 T salt
2 T cumin

1. Preheat your oven to 300°. Place all of the meat into a large dutch oven. If you don’t have a dutch oven, use your heaviest oven-proof pad with a lid.

2. Get all of your other ingredients chopped, sliced and so forth.

3. Add your vegetables and spices to the meat and give it all a good stir to mix things. Don’t worry if it’s not perfectly mixed, it will all work itself out during it’s time in the oven.

4. Put the lid on and cook in the 300° oven for 4 hours. Stir everything about every hour or so. Yeah, that’s right, 4 hours. After about an hour in the oven the fat will begin to melt out of the pork and all of the vegetables will give up their water, essentially creating a braising liquid for the meat. I told you this was easy, that meat is just about cooking itself.

5. Take the meat out of the oven and let it rest for 20 minutes with the lid on. That dutch oven is blazing hot and you don’t want anything to do with it right now.

6. Using a slotted spoon, remove all of the meat to a bowl. You can discard any of the miscellaneous peppers or limes you may find along the way. You should now be left with quite a bit of liquid in your pot. Carefully, pour that off into a bowl. Cover each bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge overnight.

7. The next day, preheat your oven to 425°. Take all of our meat and lay it out on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Now, lets take a look at that liquid we saved. It should have separated and congealed. We don’t need all the grease in there, so scrape that all of the top and discard it. (Or you can use it make the best eggs you’ve ever had!)

8. With that rather unappetizing pork jello you have remaining, spread it over the pork on the cookie sheet. During cooking, this will melt down and provide a lip-smacking glaze for the meat. Put the meat in the oven for 15 – 20. Just keep an eye on it, so that it doesn’t burn.

There you have it, easy oven pork carnitas. The exterior of the meat is nice and crispy; the inside is moist and succulent.  Those perfect little bits of pork are perfect for nachos or tacos, and they make an excellent filling for a Mexican omelet.

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