FD: Smoked Carnitas


 
Rich G

Rich G

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Happy FD, all! Some really nice cooks going on for this "holiday" Sunday!! My wife asked me what I wanted to do for FD, my reply was I wanted to cook..... I had been looking at smoked carnitas recipes, and decided to try THIS ONE. I grabbed a two-pack of butts from Costco, but only used one for this cook. I trussed it up to keep it looking shapely, then seasoned it with Lawry's Taco Seasoning (pretty much has similar ingredients to the rub in the recipe above.) This bad boy went on the pellet grill at 225F:

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Life got in the way a little, so the pork spent 5 hours in the smoke before moving onto the braising phase. Chunked up the pork, added the rest of the braising ingredients (I used a mix of guajillo and pasilla peppers, and went ahead and included the orange rinds after juicing.....) All that went into a dutch oven, and back on the grill at 350F:

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While that was doing it's thing, I mixed up the dough for some flour tortillas. These have been a bit of a nemesis for me, but I have finally found my recipe! I followed THIS RECIPE pretty closely with the following two adjustments: I used 50/50 all purpose/caputo 00 pizzeria flours, and I used beef tallow (rendered from my last brisket trimmings) instead of lard. After the dough rested for about four hours, I griddled them up on my 22" Blackstone:

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The pork had already come off the grill, I drained it (reserving the juices) and held it until we were just about ready for dinner. At that point, I fired up the Blackstone again for crispification (the key to great carnitas!!!) I moistened the pork with some of the cooking liquid, and once that cooked off, I spooned on some of the separated fat from the braise to get things frying. I ended up with great, juicy carnitas with lots of crispy bits mixed throughout:

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I probably should have gotten a bigger plate......

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I've got my "ranch" beans on there, some rice under the tortillas, and some fruit salad that my mother-in-law made. We had a really great meal, celebrated some dads, and enjoyed each other's company.

Hope you all had a great weekend!!

Rich
 
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Rich, it is so great to see an amazing "holiday" cook by you, however, also again a little eerie. As has happened in the past, your holiday cook lines up with the next big cook on my list. I got a massive 10 lb pork should last week and cut off 2 to 3 pounds of that to make Filipino Barbecue Pork Skewers (I need to post that cook here, they were amazing) and I am planning on using the rest of that pork shoulder to make Smoked Pork Carnitas. I am planning this cook for this upcoming weekend. This is partly influenced by trying to keep recreating the amazing taco's we had as tallulahs taqueria in Providence RI. I started with trying to recreate the chicken, now I want to do carnitas, and later this summer I want to try Tacos Al Pastor using this recipe.
I was planning on using this recipe, however seeing the intense braising phase from the recipe you used has me rethinking my plans. How big was your braising pot? I am 90% my lodge pot is a 5 quart and am not sure if that will be big enough, I guess I could just use a disposable pan.

Anyways, that cook looks amazing, it looks so amazing that you have me questioning my plans for the weekend and as normal I am leaning towards following more in your footsteps.

Happy Father's Day Rich!

Michael
 
Looks awesome, Rich! I'm really intersted in that tortilla recipe. I've used beef tallow before but I haven't quite perfected them yet.
 
Michael Richards said:
Rich, it is so great to see an amazing "holiday" cook by you, however, also again a little eerie. As has happened in the past, your holiday cook lines up with the next big cook on my list. I got a massive 10 lb pork should last week and cut off 2 to 3 pounds of that to make Filipino Barbecue Pork Skewers (I need to post that cook here, they were amazing) and I am planning on using the rest of that pork shoulder to make Smoked Pork Carnitas. I am planning this cook for this upcoming weekend. This is partly influenced by trying to keep recreating the amazing taco's we had as tallulahs taqueria in Providence RI. I started with trying to recreate the chicken, now I want to do carnitas, and later this summer I want to try Tacos Al Pastor using this recipe.
I was planning on using this recipe, however seeing the intense braising phase from the recipe you used has me rethinking my plans. How big was your braising pot? I am 90% my lodge pot is a 5 quart and am not sure if that will be big enough, I guess I could just use a disposable pan.

Anyways, that cook looks amazing, it looks so amazing that you have me questioning my plans for the weekend and as normal I am leaning towards following more in your footsteps.

Happy Father's Day Rich!

Michael
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Not eerie, Michael, just goes to show that great minds really do think alike! :)

I looked at a bunch of recipes, including the one you linked, and there's a lot of similarity among them. I chose the one I did because in my past "conventional" carnitas cooks, a long braise turned out the best result for me (traditionally, this would be done IN lard, but one does have to consider one's waistline sometimes....) There's a braise in the HeyGrillHey recipe, but without much of a flavorful liquid. Please note that I had double the amount of pork called for in the recipe, so, while my 6-qt dutch looks really full, your 5-qt should handle the actual recipe amounts with ease. Also, this is a covered braise, so as long as you've got your ingredients mostly covered, you're good (I actually put a bit too much water in mine, but it worked out fine.)

I stayed pretty true to the recipe just subbing taco seasoning for the rub, including my oranges in the braise after squeezing, and smoking it a bit longer than called for just because life is what it is! :)

I don't think you can go wrong with either recipe, though I can vouch for the one I linked since I made it. :)

Oh, and whip up some of those tortillas!

R
 
Dustin Dorsey said:
Looks awesome, Rich! I'm really intersted in that tortilla recipe. I've used beef tallow before but I haven't quite perfected them yet.
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Thanks, Dustin. This was the first time that I got flour tortillas to puff without using any baking powder. The tallow worked out great (as would lard, I'm sure.) The reason I substituted my 00 flour for half the recipe was due to the discussion in that "article" about the use of softer Sonoran flours. I don't have access to that, so I figured 00 which I have on hand would work. I did a test run with 1/3 00 which was good, but 1/2 00 was better. Also, I did not roll these (which I read is traditional with flour tortillas), but used a press (much easier with a couple dozen.)

R
 
I've got one of those Victoria cast iron presses. Generally they want to pull back together on me as soon as I take them off the press. Rolling them out works a little better. I've also tried cooking them on the press which is almost where I want them. I've tried resting them, but I think I build up too much gluten. I just got back from a trip to San Antonio a couple of weeks ago and everywhere we went had phenomenal tortillas. I've been using just AP flour. I've heard of using cake flour, even.
 
Dustin Dorsey said:
I've got one of those Victoria cast iron presses. Generally they want to pull back together on me as soon as I take them off the press. Rolling them out works a little better. I've also tried cooking them on the press which is almost where I want them. I've tried resting them, but I think I build up too much gluten. I just got back from a trip to San Antonio a couple of weeks ago and everywhere we went had phenomenal tortillas. I've been using just AP flour. I've heard of using cake flour, even.
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That's what I used, a Victoria press. This dough was rested about four hours, but I think using the 00 flour I have keeps it quite a bit more supple (similar to my pizza dough which uses the same flour mix.) I didn't have any snap back with the gluten on these, and I thought they turned out great (though I'll admit, it's been a while since I've had good, fresh tortillas!) :) Cake flour might act a bit similarly to the 00 as it's ground more finely, and will have a much lower protein content than the AP.
 
Great job Rich! I did the same on FD but I deboned and butterflied my butt like a book and laid it flat.
I cheated and marinated it in bottled Mojo Crillo for a day.
I thought the carnitas police would show up saying you can't do that on a smoker lol, but we really enjoyed it and by the looks of yours so did you!
 
Great cook!!! Thanks for sharing, Rich. I would love to join you for desert. That looks really good too.
 
Looks wonderful. Question. How long did you braise it for in the Dutch oven. Was the liquid broth or just water? Surprised you still had crunchy bits after being in the liquid.
 
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