If you’re into Mexican food, you must have tried one of the most famous Mexican dishes: Carnitas. You can find this versatile food served on many occasions and in different ways.
But what’s Carnitas, and how’s it made?
Carnitas is a juicy, crispy, and flavorful Mexican dish prepared through slow-cooking. The main ingredients are pig shoulders, lard, and salt, with equal amounts of lard and pork shoulder in weight. However, many versions are cooked with other pork parts and a variety of seasonings.
In the rest of the article, we’ll go through Carnita’s origins and how it’s cooked and served.
We’ll also present some popular Carnitas recipes.
What’s Carnitas?
Carnitas is a staple of Mexican food that means “little meat.” The not-so-glamorous cooking process involves pulled pork simmered or braised in lard.
After three to four hours of gentle and slow cooking, you’ll get tender meat that’s crispy outside and juicy inside.
Mexicans traditionally serve Carnitas with corn tortillas, salsa, and guacamole.
If you go to Mexico, you’ll find this dish everywhere, sold by street vendors and upscale restaurants.
Carnitas Ingredients
The traditional Carnitas that comes from Michoacan has four ingredients: fresh parts of pork (including meat, organs, and skin), lard, salt, and water.
The lard and pork have to be equal in weight. So, it essentially involves cooking pigs in pig fat. The pot used for melting the lard is copper.
Traditionally, Mexicans only use a copper pot for cooking Carnitas, which lets them keep and reuse the lard.
Some families use an entire pig for weddings or festivals. Depending on the region, Mexicans add other ingredients to get a better result or add more flavor.
It’s not uncommon in some regions to see Coca-Cola, beer, milk, orange juice, chicken broth, and even condensed milk added to herbs and spices.
Instead of shredding the pork, it’s better to chop it and put it in soft corn tortillas.
Popular toppings include guacamole, chopped onions, salsa, lime juice, and cilantro.
You may find different varieties made with other kinds of meat in some restaurants, such as veal, which is juicier.
It’s made in a traditional pot called a cauldron, but you can make it in regular pans.
However, modern versions of Carnitas leave out the copper cauldrons, open fires, and the lard. Instead, you can use water, vegetable oil, or fat.
Rather than immersing the meat in lard, you can fry or sauté the meat after cooking the meat in water until tender.
The most important reason for abandoning these features is health issues related to fat consumption and modern kitchens’ limitations.
That’s why many people enjoy cooking the dish in pressure cookers to shorten the cooking process.
Carnitas Origins
There’s much controversy over the origins of Carnitas. Michoacan, Jalisco, Hidalgo, Queretaro, and the Mexico state all claim to be the birthplace of Carnitas.
However, this dish may have originated in the Caribbean, where cuts of meat are slow-cooked after being marinated or seasoned.
This style is called Barbacoa and involves cooking meat on maguey leaves and adding smoke and spices.
A Specialty for Festivities
Carnitas has close ties with festive occasions such as the Mercado or tianguis days, both famous marketplace days.
The dish is an indispensable part of the Mexican culture as it’s not a one-person kind of dish.
It takes a whole community to cook the dish, which connects to Mexicans’ collective spirit.
It’s so important for Mexicans to use it as a part of other treats, such as tortas ahogadas.
The Best Part of Pork for Carnitas
This issue isn’t as controversial as the origins of this dish. Most carnitas-loving chefs agree that the best part of the pig is the shoulders.
However, traditional restaurants in Mexico use the whole hog that ensures a wholesome variety of flavors and tastes.
If you don’t have access to an entire hog, any fatty part of pork that’s also muscular will do to endure the long process of slow-cooking.
Best Seasoning for Carnitas
If you search the internet, you’ll find many cooking styles and seasoning that all seem fine and legit.
However, finding the best seasoning for Carnitas needs looking into the dish’s origins.
Since Carnitas is a special occasion dish made with an entire hog and enjoyed in poor rural areas, it’s reasonable that seasoning isn’t as important as the meat.
That’s why most classic recipes don’t need much seasoning and spice. All that matters is to salt the meat, submerge it in fat, and cook for a long time.
The lard, the pork, and the lengthy cooking process contribute to the unique taste that will drown in any other added flavors.
However, you can experience a whole range of flavors by adding other spices. If you want it tangy, serve it with salsa verde.
If you prefer hotter versions, spoon on salsa roja. And guacamole gives it a creamy texture.
This way of cooking makes Carnitas one of the simplest Mexican dishes.
This simplicity is also reflected in the way the Mexicans serve it. Put it in taco shells, sprinkle some cilantro and salsa, and you’re good to go.
Carnitas Recipes
Since there’s no specific recipe that all people agree upon, every state of Mexico has its own recipe.
However, the Michoacan style is widely popular.
The basic carnitas recipe involves seasoning the pork shoulder with generous amounts of salt, refrigerating it overnight, and cooking it in lard.
However, there are some other versions:
Simple Carnitas
Ingredients
- 4 lbs (1.81 kg) pork roast
- 1 white onion
- 1 tablespoon of salt
- ½ lb (227 g) Bacon
- 2 lbs (907 g) lard
Instructions
- Wash the roast and put it in a pot. If it has skin or bones, don’t remove them.
- Cut the onions into large pieces and add them to the pot, together with salt.
- Put the roast in boiling water and simmer until tender, for 2 hours.
- Drain the roast and remove the onion. Discard the skin and bones and cut the roast into 4″ cubes.
- Put the lard in the copper pot and put it at medium-high temperature. Melt the lard and cook the bacon in it for 2 minutes. It should get crispy on the outside.
- Cook the pork cubes in the lard a few at a time. It’s a personal preference to get it all crispy or halfway between.
- Add salt to the fried pork if desired.
You could nest the Carnitas in taco shells or on the side of rice and beans.
Slow-cooked Carnitas
Ingredients
- 4 lbs (1.81 kg) pork shoulders
- Salt, pepper, oregano 2 teaspoons each
- 1 sliced avocado
- 1 onion cut into 4 pieces
- Fresh cilantro
- Corn tortillas
- Salsa
Instructions
- Put the pork in the slow cooker bowl and add salt, pepper, and oregano.
- Cook the pork over a low temperature for 6 hours until the meat is tender and falls apart.
- Drain the pork, remove the onions, and shred the pork using your fingers or a fork.
- Serve the Carnitas on a platter with avocado, cilantro, and salsa.
Carnitas in the Oven
You could also cook Carnitas in the oven. It’s a special recipe with brown sugar and coke.
All you need to do is slow-cook the pork in lard or vegetable oil and cook in the oven for an hour.
Add coke, brown sugar, garlic, milk, and chipotle. Cook for another hour, shred the pork and serve it on a platter with lime, cilantro, and corn tortillas.
Conclusion
Carnitas is a versatile Mexican dish with controversial origins. It consists of pork shoulders seasoned with salt and slow-cooked in lard in copper cauldrons.
After hours of slow-cooking, the result will be pork crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.
However, modern versions involve other cooking utensils such as an oven, pressure cooker, and regular pans.
Instead of lard, you can cook it in milk, vegetable oil, and even Coca-Cola.
You can serve it with taco shells, shredded cabbage, salsa verde, guacamole, and any other thing you like.
And to wash it dowm how about some Tepache?
Sources
- Lo Mexicano: THE MAGIC OF CARNITAS
- All Recipes: What Is Carnitas?
- Café Delites: Carnitas
- Serious Eats: The Food Lab: The Best Way to Make Carnitas (Without a Bucket of Lard!)
- The Johan: Beginner’s Guide To Mexican Food, Part VIII: Authentic Carnitas Recipe
- David Lebovitz: Carnitas
- Rachel Audan: Carnitas Revisited: Some Tentative Thoughts about Origins
- Prezi: History of Carnitas
- El Pollo Norteno: A CELEBRATION OF CARNITAS
- Focus On Mexico: Carnitas a gift from Michoacan to the whole World
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Jorge Garcia is the founder of AmigoFoods, where he has spent over 20 years helping readers discover authentic Latin American and Spanish cuisine. Raised in a Cuban-American household, Jorge learned to cook at the hands of his mother and grandmother, carrying forward generations of family recipes. That heritage, backed by his family’s four-generation history in the Latin food industry, inspired him to launch AmigoFoods in 2003. With more than 1,000 published articles on recipes, ingredients, and food culture, Jorge’s mission is simple: make authentic Latin cooking approachable for home cooks everywhere while honoring the traditions behind every dish.