I am a big fan of Mexican and other Latin American food so I do my best to try as many different types of items as possible. I hear a lot of people saying how much they like pork carnitas, so I’ve tried it several times at a range of restaurants and I’m sad to say that I always find it to be very bland, in comparison to the same dishes made with steak or other fillings.
It disappoints me, because when I think of slow-roasted pork, I get the idea that it should taste great, but it always tastes under-seasoned to me.
Anyone else have this experience?
So, hey, here’s a real specific question – why isn’t pork carnitas better-tasting?
Yes! I am a big fan of good Pork Carnitas, they have to have the right amount of char on the outside, tender falling-apart insides, and just a tiny bit greasy. So many restaurants serve bland cooked pork chunks and call them Carnitas (what, did they boil them?), but they just ain’t right.
You can hardly shake a stick around here without hitting a mex place. Most of those serve bad carnitas. A few, most often the best of them serve a sublime plate of porky goodness.
I make my own, and it was quite a learning process to get it right. Watery enhanced pork being a big problem. A spectacularly flavorless wasted pork but showed me that part of the cure is to cook first and season later .
It’s all about the pork and the technique. The best carnitas I’ve had were prepared very simply: just a bunch of pieces of pork (mostly shoulder and ribs), cooked in a large copper kettle in lard until it becomes soft and shreddable. Usually, you start low for about an hour and a half, and then finish it off on high heat for the last 15 minutes or so to crisp up the outsides. Sometimes, they will add orange peel or orange pieces or various spices to the oil.
It’s very straightforward food. A good carnita has a nice crispness and browning on the outside, juiciness on the interior pieces, and tastes mostly of pork, not much else, unless you sauce it up.
I make carnitas all the time, and they’re so **not **bland that I often just plop them on top of rice or beans and cram them in my porkhole. Three things that I find are necessary: salt, caramelization, and a little acid. Best way to do it is low and slow in the oven (and wrapped in banana leaves, but really, that doesn’t happen all that often in my household.) I salt before and after cooking to make sure it’s seasoned enough, then pull it apart and return it to the rendered fat and juice and give it some more time in the oven to get a little more brown on it. I also squeeze lime juice over it to brighten it up a little. If you start with a good piece of meat, it’s the easiest, cheapest, tastiest way to feed a crowd that I know of.
The most delicious carnitas I’ve ever had were from Costco, of all places. In the meat section, Costco sells preseasoned, uncooked carnitas, wrapped in a foil pouch. You throw the whole thing in the oven for however long and it comes out crunchy edged, tender inside, and VERY flavorful.
My father’s makes them using a iron skillet. I like them unseasoned as I put salt on them. In fact, unless I’m putting gravy on pork chops, I like all my pork unseasoned. Salt is all I need.
The best carnitas technique that I use is smoking a pork butt in a smoker low and slow and then get the smoky outer layer and put that in the oven to carmelize. This technique will give you excellent flavorful results. There are some foods that take a long time to cook, and most restaurants are not going to take the time. Instead you get a plate with a lot of short cuts on it that add up to bland food.
Don Pablo’s used to have wonderful pork carnitas. Nowadays, though, the pork is rather mushy and flavorless. No char and no taste. And I am a woman who loves pork, so if I’m ignoring a pork item on the menu, it’s got to be bad.
Don Pablo’s is the only decent tex-mex we’ve found here in the Baltimore area, so my wife and I tend to go there once a week. We always split an order of the carnitas. It seems to be still pretty good, at least here… but I could use more scorching on the outside (which I’ve always felt brings out the best flavor in pork).
I cut boneless pork shoulder into 2 inch chunks, season it with salt/pepper/garlic, and grill it quickly on the gas grill until it is nicely browned/charred. Then dump it in the crock pot with salsa verde for 2-3 hours. Not bland at all.
The classic method does involve a huge copper pot & a bunch of lard. There are other ways of cooking the meat that are more suited to the home kitchen–but they usually involve a final step to provide a bit of crunch. If the pork is just stewed, you can get a very bland dish…
The Original Ninfa’s, a pioneering Houston restaurant, serves enchiladas verdes made with carnitas; chicken is more common. Over the restaurant’s long history, they sometimes substituted bland stewed pork for real carnitas & the difference was notable. (Hmm… time to drop by again.)
Slight hijack, but I recently over-bought some NC-style pulled-pork barbecue. For leftovers, I made up some black beans, and we ate on barbecue and black beans for days–burritos, tacos, giant bowls of pork and beans, all served with varying combinations of avocado, salsa verde, and sour cream. It was amazingly delicious, much better than any carnitas I’ve ever had.
I’m suspecting that your problem is location. I’ve had pork carnitas at multiple restaurants here and they’re fine. Some better than others, yeah, but I’ve never had a problem with them being bland.
But then, the idea of Don Pablo’s being the best Mexican around just makes me sad. I went to Don Pablo’s. Once. I’m not sure how they manage to stay open here.
ETA: LHOD - but did you eat a proper pulled pork sammich with coleslaw and vinegar?
