Carnitas!

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One of my missions in life is to discover and create delicious inexpensive food. You don’t need a recession to eat very tasty food on the cheap. Yesterday I made Carnitas from a pork shoulder, or the pork butt. This cut can be had for as low as 89¢ a pound. My sudden impulse for Carnitas caused me to pay $1.20 a pound for a five pound butt, not bad.

Pork butt is a very versatile cut if you have some time and know what you’re doing. I have at least five different recipes for this shoulder cut (besides making sausage) and no two will taste the same. It beats eating SPAM for $2.60 a pound.


It’s easy to buy some ground beef for $1.80 a pound, a packet of taco seasonings, come lettuce and cheddar and sit down for some damn good tacos in about an hour. That’s fine but there are times when my tongue likes to dance and I don’t mind a little extra work.


I took a 5 lb. hunk of butt and boned it. No, not what you’re thinking. I cut the meat away from the bone and sliced it into 2’ chunks while trimming as much fat as possible. The spice list is simple. 1t salt, 1t pepper, 1t cumin and 1t oregano. After tossing it all into a large dutch oven with 2 cups of water, an onion quartered and the juice from one lime and one orange it goes into the oven at 300 degrees for 2.5 hours. Have a drink or five.


When you pull it out of the oven the first thing to do is separate the meat from the juice. Remove the hard ingredients such as the bay leafs, onion and orange rinds. Next pull your big pork pieces into two pieces on a separate plate while the liquid in the dutch oven reduces into a thick sauce. Switch the oven from bake to broil and place a rack onto an oven set on broil. Place on second rack from the top.



Place the pork chunks into the sauce and coat it with the sauce and a bit of salt and powdered cayenne pepper. Place chunks on a wire rack over a pan and broil for a few minutes to char the outside.

I like to break up the chunks and top a small warm flour tortilla with the meat. Add cilantro leaves, some chopped raw onion, a few drops of taco sauce and a touch of shredded cheese.

Pig out. On the cheap.
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