Mexican Chilli Carnitas Recipe
By Nicola Lando
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20 minutes prep time
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180 minutes cook time
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Intermediate
‘Carnitas’ just refers to the shredded crispy pork, so it isn’t a meal by itself. You can make ‘carnitas fajitas’ (see steps at end of recipe).
The pork can be slow cooked a couple of days in advance and kept in the refrigerator – and save the last step of frying the meat for just before you serve it.
Ingredients Serves: 6
- 800g boned pork shoulder (fat and skin removed before weighing)
- 2-3 whole dried Ancho or Mulato chillies
- 2 tbsp sunflower oil
- 100g smoked bacon lardons
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- ½ tsp fine salt
- 500ml chicken stock
- 6 tbsp sunflower oil
To serve
- Corn tortillas
Method
- Cut the boned pork shoulder into 2-inch chunks.
- In a heavy-bottom 9” diameter lidded pan, over a medium heat, dry fry the dried chillies for a few minutes without burning.
- Transfer to a spice grinder and grind to flakes. In the same pan, heat sunflower oil and fry smoked bacon lardons until browned.
- Add the pork shoulder pieces, ground cumin, ground coriander, fine salt, the ground chilli and chicken stock. Stir and bring to a gentle simmer, place on lid and cook for 2 ½ - 3 hours over a low heat until the pork is tender (or 1 hour in a pressure cooker).
- Using a slotted spoon, lift out the pork into a separate dish. Increase the heat to high, and boil vigorously, reducing the liquid until there is only ½-1cm of liquid in the base of the pan. It will be the consistency of double cream.
- Add the pork back to the pan and mix well, shredding as you stir. Continue to cook over a medium to high heat for a few minutes longer as the liquid continues to reduce. If you do not want to use the meat straight away, leave to cool and keep covered in the fridge for a couple of days.
- To serve, heat sunflower oil in a non-stick frying pan over a high heat. Lift in the shredded pork and leave to brown without stirring. After 5 minutes, move the meat around, flip some of the browned meat over, and leave to sit again for a few minutes. You want to brown and crisp up parts of the meat.
- Continue this for 20-30 minutes without letting the meat burn. The carnitas are now ready to spoon into tacos, fajitas, over tortilla chips, or just to serve with rice and beans.
To turn the carnitas into ‘carnitas fajitas’, whilst the meat fries in the last step, pre-heat your grill. Cut 3 green peppers and 3 onions into eighths, and toss with a little sunflower oil.
Grill under a high heat until charred, but retaining a little bite. Allowing 2 flour tortillas per person, spoon in the carnitas, roast vegetables, some guacamole, chopped fresh coriander and a squeeze of lime juice.
Add a little habanero chilli salsa or powder for extra heat, if you want something a little more fiery. For a truly authentic Mexican dinner to impress, make your own tortillas with masa harina corn flour and a tortilla press.
About the author
Nicola is co-founder and CEO at Sous Chef. She has worked in food for over ten years.
Nicola first explored cooking as a career when training at Leiths, before spending the next decade in Finance. However... after a stage as a chef at a London Michelin-starred restaurant, Nicola saw the incredible ingredients available only to chefs. And wanted access to them herself. So Sous Chef was born.
Today, Nicola is ingredients buyer and a recipe writer at Sous Chef. She frequently travels internationally to food fairs, and to meet producers. Her cookbook library is vast, and her knowledge of the storecupboard is unrivalled. She tastes thousands of ingredients every year, to select only the best to stock at Sous Chef.
Nicola shares her knowledge of ingredients and writes recipes to showcase those products. Learning from Sous Chef's suppliers and her travels, Nicola writes many of the recipes on the Sous Chef website. Nicola's recipes are big on flavour, where the ingredients truly shine (although that's from someone who cooks for hours each day - so they're rarely tray-bakes!).
