How to make Crock pot Pork Carnitas! Its easy

I am going to give you step by step instructions on making Restaurant style Pork Carnitas slow cooked in a crock pot.
They are just like the Restaurant, but in your own home, YUM!

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• 1 boneless pork roast
• Seasoning salt
• plain salt
• poultry seasoning (weird huh?)
• Frying pan or skillet
• Crock pot
• THE BELOW INGREDIENTS ARE OPTIONAL.
• corn tortillas if making tacos
• Lime for garnish
• Diced onion for garnish
• Chopped cilantro for garnish
• Salsa for garnish

1. The first step to making your carnitas is to season the pork roast. I like to place my pork on a plate and then season each side. Use your seasoning salt, your plain salt and your poultry seasoning at this point. Season to your liking, but don't be afraid to pour it on. Remember you are seasoning the whole roast, you want there to be enough flavor for the inside meat too. I would use about a half tbsp of each salt and seasoning salt and a full tbsp of poultry seasoning. It does depend on the size of your roast. Use your better judgement and be sure to cover the meat on all sides with seasoning.

2. Next in your frying pan heat enough oil to coat the bottom of your pan about one inch. Make sure your pan is large enough to fry your roast in comfortably. Once your oil is nice and hot. Carefully place your roast into the hot oil. I use two large forks to poke into the meat for lifting. Seer off that side and than move onto the next. The idea is to get each side nicely browned with no open edges for the juices to leak out. Be careful, the oil may pop a bit.

3. Once you have seered the roast off. Its off to the crock pot! Place it in the crock pot on high with a lid covering it for about five hours or so depending on the size of your roast. When finished you should be able to just poke at it with a fork and have it falling apart into shreds. I is not ready if you are not experiencing easy shreading.

4. The next step is to remove the meat from any juices left in the crock pot and fully shred the meat. You want the meat to be dryer, if it is dripping juice it will pop all over when re-fry it. Once you have done that, you once again fill a frying pan with about one inch of Oil. Waite until the oil is very hot. Keep it on high. Then you add the pork. Let it set for a few minutes so the bottom has a chance to fry. Then flip it around. Kind of like making fried pototoes. Sometimes the meat will stick to the bottom of the pan. That is ok. A metal spatula works best and you just want to scrape that meat from the bottom and mix it in to the rest of the meat.

5. Once the meat is fried to your liking, feel free to salt to taste. Warm some corn tortillas and make tacos. Squeeze lime over the taco, add some diced onion and cilantro if you would like. Salsa is also great and here is the best salsa recipe I found
   www.ehow.com/how_5037389_make-real-salsa.html
   I hope you enjoy your carnitas!

Tips & Warnings

• When frying your meat, make sure the oil is very hot.
• I find that cooking the meat in the crock pot a day in advance is some times easer.
• Make sure to remove the liquids from the meat before frying it. I some times squeze the meat over a bowl to remove excess liquids.
• Caution always be safe around hot oil.
• Turn pan handles away from edge so children do not grab them.

[diamondeyed]

on 9/1/2009 Aahhhh.... Tongs! Good idea, thanks!

[toogie2]

on 8/31/2009 I wondered how you get that wonderful texture and flavor in carnitas! It's like Thai pulled meat - frying after slow cooking. (BTW, instead of forks, you could use tongs in the first browning step. They don't pierce the meat.)

[grove]

on 6/13/2009 This looks delicious.

[1daydreamer]

on 6/5/2009 I love carnitas

[centralvalley]

on 6/2/2009 I love your recipe for Crock pot Pork Carnitas.Great recipe!!!!!!!!