I made these pork carnitas a few days ago, and they were so amazing I feel the need to share the recipe! Keep in mind, cooking is more of an art than a science, so most of these measurements are approximate. :)
What you need:
- 1 pork tenderloin (mine was about 1.3 pounds)
- 1.5 oranges halved
- 1/2 onion finely diced
- 1 jalepeno pepper de-seeded & de-ribbed
- About 3 teaspoons of oregano
- About 2 tablespoons of cumin (awesome metabolism booster!)
- About 2 teaspoons of chili powder
- Salt & pepper
- 1 cup of water
- About 3 tablespoons of olive oil
- About 2 tablespoons of lime juice
- Chipotle sauce to taste
- Enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a large pan
- Tortillas
- Avocado
- I also think cilantro would be a nice addition, but I did not have any when I made this
What to do:
- Rinse off the tenderloin. (I always get individually packaged tenderloins & I just feel like it's weird to have stuff in plastic for a while. I might just have OCD.)
- Add onion & pepper into crockpot
- Drizzle the olive oil over the tenderloin in your crockpot.
- Sprinkle salt & pepper & other seasonings directly onto the tenderloin.
- Squeeze juice out of oranges into the pot & leave the oranges in there.
- Add water to crockpot.
- Cook on low (for ~6.5 hours) or keep warm (for ~8 hours or more) or hot (for probably ~4 hours)
- When you have about an hour (or a half hour) left in the crock pot, start to put the tenderloin apart with a fork.
- Take out the orange peels. Add the chipotle sauce & stir
- When the pulled pork has absorbed the water & seasonings to your liking, remove pork from the pot & put into oiled pan. Press pork into bottom of pan
- Cook on medium until the bottom layer begins to get crispy. Or don't. This isn't totally necessary & hanger is a real emotion. :)
- Put together tacos anyway you'd like & get your feast on!
