Slow Cooker Carnitas

Sometimes life is just… well… busy. As much as we love cooking, during the week it really becomes a challenge to find time to cook. We make it a priority to cook at home at least one night during the weekend, but with work and rehearsals and blog events and whatever else is going on throughout the week, sometimes we just need a meal we can pull together quickly. Let’s be honest, when it’s 8:30 on Wednesday and we’re hangry, if we don’t have something at the house, a Taco Bell run is pretty inevitable. Our post today will hopefully prevent that from happening in both our house and yours. This is a super easy recipe that takes about 10 minutes to prep. When making good carnitas, it’s all in the rub. You can adjust this rub really based on what spices you prefer, but we usually use some combination of chili powder, garlic powder, salt, cayenne pepper, and cumin.

Simply rub that goodness all over the pork, then place it in a crock pot. We’ve read a lot of conflicting views on if searing each side of the pork is necessary before the slow cook, and in our opinion, it’s not. I tried this exact recipe both ways, one time searing the edges and one time not, and couldn’t taste a difference. So for the sake of time when I’m making this recipe at 5:00am, I say: skip it.

For the liquid, water, stock, beer, or any combination of the three will do. Just make sure it reaches up 2/3 of the sides of the pork. Stick a few bay leaves in there just for good measure, and the rest of the rub if you have any leftover that didn’t stick to the pork.

Set your slow cooker to low for 6-8 hours. You’ll know it’s done when it easily pulls apart. Remove the pork from the slow cooker and pull the pork apart with two forks. Discard any big pieces of fat.

At this point, your carnitas is ready to be served. You can serve it up as is, or if you are delivering this to a friend later on or perhaps not eating the carnitas for a while, you can put it back in the cooking liquid and keep on warm until it’s ready to be served.

We love making tacos with our carnitas. Serve the carnitas with flour tortillas, cheese, cilantro, peppers, guacamole, and whatever else you love in your tacos. Carnitas tacos are great to make for others in need of a meal (friends who just had a baby, surgeries, etc.) – it will feed a big group of people and makes enough for leftovers. You can also serve the carnitas atop a salad or as a side to just about any vegetable.

We hope you enjoy this weeknight meal as much as we do!

Pork Carnitas

Prep time: 10 min. Cook Time: 8 hours

Ingredients:

3 lb. pork shoulder (also sold as pork butt)

3 tablespoons chili powder

1 tablespoon coarse Kosher salt

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

4 bay leaves

Stock/Beer/Water

Preparation:

Combine chili powder, salt, cumin, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper in a small bowl. Massage generously onto all sides of the pork. Place pork in slow cooker and add liquid (any combination of water/beer/stock) until liquid reaches up 2/3 of the pork. Tuck bay leaves in liquid. Cover and set slow cooker to low for 6-8 hours, or until pork easily pulls apart.

Remove pork from slow cooker and pull apart using two forks. Discard fat. The pork carnitas is now ready to serve as-is, or if you’d like, you can return it to the cooking liquid and keep on warm until ready to serve.

Use carnitas for tacos, salads, and more.