I made carnitas! (On a mildly related note, has anyone else noticed that their Mac autocorrects their text? Is this a setting I can change? Because… it keeps correcting my words. So carnitas turns into carnal… wtfffff and when I say OooO! in my chats it changes it to POO! I find this mildly funny, but mostly annoying).

But back to the carnitas… so Homesick Texan’s recipe for carnitas has been on a bit of a blog blitz, and so when I was wandering around a new (and very sweet) grocery store I saw some Boston Butt (tehehe) in the meat case, so I asked the nice butcher to wrap it up for me. I know I’m in my mid-twenties, but I still giggled a little when I had to ask the butcher “Can I please have the second Boston butt on the shelf?”

Anyway. You can read the recipe here at Homesick Texan’s website. The carnitas were delicious, but I have a couple notes to make.

• Because the pork is unseasoned, the pork has a distinct smell. It’s not an unpleasant smell, but I added a few cracks of pepper at the 1 hour mark, and I think that helped. I think swapping out a couple tablespoons of the orange juice for some carrot juice will also help.
• Add a generous amount of water. I found that the water evaporated at an alarming pace, even when I reduced the heat drastically, so I did add more at the 1 hour mark. However, I think it would be best to simply start out with enough water.
• Get a generously marbled piece of pork. Mine was quite fatty, but I still felt that more fat needed to have rendered in order for the pork to caramelize properly. If you aren’t able to find a piece of meat that has enough fat, you should consider adding a bit of bacon lard to your pot, or perhaps some duck fat.
• Place the fatty pieces of pork on the bottom of the pot to help render the fat and prevent sticking.