While cruising facebook one day Matty, my #handsomehubbs ran into this recipe from the folks at Buzzfeed and immediately knew he found a keeper- with some tweaking, of course. Matty’s carnitas are suuuuuper easy to make and usually last us at least 3 days. We make them into tacos at home and serve them over rice for work lunches. For Chickie, we skip the last (broiler) step and serve them so she can use her little hands to eat, she LOVES them!
The reason these Carnitas are SO easy to make is because they cook slooowwwly over 6 (and a half) hours in a crock pot or slow cooker. You chop everything up, put it all in the slow cooker and THAT’S IT! 6.5 hours later, you have yourself some damn good carnitas. Ready for the recipe? Let’s do it!
Ingredients:
- 3 pounds of pork shoulder/butt cut into pieces (Note from Matty: recipe calls for boneless but bone-in is good as long as you cut around it. Also, trim the fat!!)
- Juice of two whole oranges and the oranges themselves
- Juice of two limes
- Dry oregano to taste
- Salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
- Cumin to taste
- Three bay leaves
- 8 whole, peeled cloves of garlic
- 1 medium onion, quartered.
How To:
Throw all ingredients in the slow cooker and stir them up a bit. Set it for 6.5 hours and watch it cook! Depending on your slow cooker, you can go as long as 8 hours.
Optional but FULLY RECOMMENDED
Once the slow cooker is done with the pork (yuuummmmm!) throw the finished product on a sheet pan with the oven on BROIL for 5-10 minutes until they get nice and crispy. As explained above, we usually skip this step for Chickie’s carnitas so they’r more toddler friendly. The finished, crispy product is amazing with your favorite taco toppings on a corn tortilla. Enjoy!
Lerae says
September 12, 2017 at 10:05 pmMmk gonna try these ASAP.
SHR says
October 10, 2017 at 2:38 pmYESSS! They are SOOO good, pinky promise!