Pork Carnitas

I have recently become obsessed with these Pork Carnitas. Not only is this recipe super easy to make, it’s also incredibly delicious and can be served a variety of ways (even if you end up eating them right out of the pot like I do).  This recipe really breaks down into a few steps, season, sear, and braise.  The hardest part of making this dish is finding the time, however you’ll find that your patience with this recipe will be rewarded.  This recipe starts out with a 4 lb pork shoulder cut into large chunks and then seasoned.  I’ve written this recipe to provide time to let your pork sit and marinate with all of the seasonings for one hour, which really lets the flavors sink in for a much better result.  While your pork is marinating, you can go ahead and prepare your aromatics and braising liquid.  Once your hour is up, it’s time to brown your pork on all sides and then off into the oven it goes along with your aromatics and braising liquid.  Truly, one of the best parts of this recipe is that once you finish a few steps at the beginning, the oven does the rest of the work for you, it’s like having an extra set of hands in the kitchen!  All you have to do from here is flip your pork after an hour and replenish any liquid if necessary.  After two hours, you will have the most tender and shreddy pork that is bursting with flavor.  I like to remove my pork, shred it and then add about ½ cup of the braising liquid to it.  Be sure to save the rest of your braising liquid for serving or even dipping your corn tortillas in before you toast them up for serving.  I like to serve this as a taco or burrito bowl accompanied by some sour cream, pickled onions, and fresh pico de gallo, but any way you choose to eat these, you will truly see how magic this recipe is.  Speaking of magic, did you know about that time we witnessed an absolute calamity at a magic show?  The local theater was doing an amateur magic night and tickets were free so we decided to go check it out.  We saw all the usual acts from card tricks, sawing assistants in half, and even some mind reading tricks.  But the one act that really took the whole place down (literally) was the most unhinged juggling act I’ve ever seen.  The juggler started with innocent objects such as scarves and bowling pins but then gradually moved on to more and more dangerous objects.  After graduating to meat cleavers, he went onto his final act of juggling flaming chain saws, and that’s when the show took a turn for the worse.  As he worked his way up to 3 flaming chainsaws, he must have gotten a pretty hard urge to sneeze because his face started to twitch and wrinkle and his eyes began to water.  The next thing we knew, he lost his balance and one chainsaw clipped the fire alarm which triggered all the sprinklers to go off while another chainsaw skidded right off the stage into the orchestra pit and started all of the woodwind instruments on fire.  All at once, the community center was in complete chaos!  Fortunately, the audience was relatively small and was able to quickly and calmly exit the building.  Shortly after, the fire department arrived on the scene to put out the fire and stop the sprinklers, but by then everyone had gone home and the show was over. By this time we were all soggy but starting to get really hungry, and that’s when we remembered that right down the street was a Mexican restaurant that was known for their famous Pork Carnitas.