Carnitas

Here are some pictures that I took early this year when I was living in Indiana still. It's a great, easy recipe...figured since I already had the pictures I might as well share them with you! :)

Carnitas are delicious and really quite easy. You purchase a pork butt roast, brown it, and stick it in a crock pot all day and wait for magic to occur! Let me walk you through it...

Buy your meat. Season liberally on all sides with salt and pepper.

Heat up your skillet/pan. The hotter the better. We are looking to brown the meat as quickly as possible. We are not trying to cook the meat through - that's what the crock pot is for!

Place your well-seasoned meat in the pan. If you don't hear intense sizzling as soon as the meat makes contact, it's not hot enough.

Brown the meat on all sides. Mmmm. Resist the urge to pick off a particularly well-browned piece!

Transfer your meat to the waiting crock pot. Add in one bottle of beer. Whatever you prefer. Seems to me like a mexican beer lends itself rather well to carnitas...but really, whatever you have on hand will work perfectly. For those of you concerned about alcohol, all of the alcohol will cook out over the long cooking process. Then you're left with just the wonderful flavor from the beer.

Put the lid on. Set the crock pot to low. Now walk away. Seriously. For 6-8 hours. Go to work. Get a manicure. Get a haircut. Wrap Christmas presents if you're organized like that.

Now that 8 glorious hours have passed....remove the lid. Be sure not to take off the lid earlier than this to get a sneak peak. The built up steam inside of the crock pot is what helps the cooking process. Everytime this escapes you need to add on an extra 30 minutes of cooktime. Just wait, trust me!

Stick a fork in the meat...

And it should just fall off the bone.....and perhaps, directly into your mouth. You do need to be sure its safe for others to eat before serving, right?

This makes an easy weeknight meal. Hard to beat a 4 ingredient main course. Also, works really well for parties, because you just double the amount of meat and add in another bottle of beer. Easy math. Shred the meat and place in tacos. Carnitas burritos? Yum. Tostada with beans, carnitas, lettuce, tomatoes, avocado...mmm.

Enjoy!

Mary