Carnitas Según lo Previsto

This is more like it. The Carnitas recipe at Simply Recipes is more or less what I did. Except, as I said in my last post, I burned the first batch to a crisp and reused the liquid from the crock pot for the replacement pork roast.



The recipe (not entirely as presented at Simply Recipes, this is what I actually did):

1 pork roast (sirloin tip)
1 14.5oz can Ro-Tel tomatoes, undrained
1 16 oz. can diced tomatoes
1/3 cup Mrs. Renfro's Habanero Salsa
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lime
1 pint chicken broth (to finish covering meat)

The recipe called for 2 cups of salsa, but the only salsa I had in the house was the Mrs. Renfro's and I wanted this to be something I might con Em into trying. Mrs. Renfro's Habanero has a great flavor, best salsa on earth in my entirely un-humble opinion, but it does pack some heat. Not as much as the name implies, but it's pretty intense.

And Em thinks black pepper is hot and spicy.



So I used just a touch of Mrs. R to give it flavor, and diluted the heat of the Ro-Tel with just plain diced tomatoes. Plus, the roast is whole while it cooks in this stuff, so there's a limit to the infiltration of capsicum, I think. Hope. We'll see if Em goes into full meltdown when she tries it.*

Combine all this stuff in your slow cooker and let it simmer on low forever. I put this in last night after I ruined the first batch and let it go until I got home from work this evening. The roast was so tender by then it was impossible to transfer whole to the roasting pan. If you looked at it cross-eyed, it came apart.



To 'pull' the pork, I just kind of mashed at it with a ladle and it came apart in gloriously tender strings.

20 minutes on 400 to remove a bit of moisture and caramelize it and you're good to go. Goes excellently, by the way, with Chile Verde. Next time I make that dish, all the meat that goes in it will get this treatment.

*Postscript:



Mo ate the Carnitas like she'd just got out of a Turkish prison. Em liked it at first, but after awhile decided it was too dry. I suggested she try some ranch dressing, since I knew she wouldn't use salsa or the Chile Verde that was also on the table, which was what I was combining in my Carnitas wrap.

She decided the ranch dressing was too tangy, then, and really she didn't eat all that much. When we got back from her dancing, she claimed to be starving and fixed herself a sandwich. She's officially a teenager today, and I guess officially a high maintenance one. at that.