Tacos de Carnitas

I highly recommend that you bring the pork to a boil, reduce to a simmer and skim the scum BEFORE adding the other ingredients. Otherwise all of the ingredients that float will mix with the scum and be scimmed out along with the scum and the dish will be largely under seasoned.

We love this recipe.

Two things:
1. for those averse to the fat of pork shoulder, it CAN be done with pork loin, but need to add a little oil. (Its not as good like this, but perhaps healthier).
2. the recipe needs lacks cumin. It needs at at least a teaspoon.

I have done it in a slow cooker and, after taking it out, put on a baking pan and either broil (while watching closely until the meat begins to "fry"); or alternately, place in 350 oven until the same thing happens - about 25 minutes, but check often.

I've made this twice now and will do again today. I add more orange and onion than is called for here, preferring quartered oranges to the zest, and quartering the onion too. I leave the meat in larger pieces and then when tender I remove it and sear it all over in oil. I strain the cooking liquid and add enough back to the now seared meat to remoisten. Phenomenal, full flavored.

OK so this recipe is pretty authentic -- the cloves, the orange, the cinnamon etc. I cooked it in my slow cooker for 9 hours. The aroma of the cooking citrus and spices and pork drove my husband and dog nuts. Succulent, tasty, and moist. I put the shredded pork on a cookie sheet and broiled it to get that crispiness I love in carnitas I get at my local taqueria. Wow! Served just as in the recipe with white onion, cilantro and homemade salsa on the side. Beyond good -- a great recipe.

Really enjoyed this dish. A hint when using corn tortilla, dip it in water, put it on a hot pan, then it is easy to add the ingredients and then FOLD the tortilla. It will bend w/o breaking.

The tip to boil and skim first, then adding other ingredients, is one of the single best tips on this site. Do that. Recipe is delicious.

A wildly inaccurate amount of water. It should read "to barely cover". I'm standing here trying to boil down a pot of pork soup for dinner, way too angry to wait to include whether it's any good if I finally get carnitas out of it.

I followed "Steve's" tip (below) re skimming. Worked beautifully. It took longer to cook the liquid down than described. We liked this better than the Tanis recipe for pork & green chile tacos, although next time around I think I'd add a bit more spice -- more red pepper and some black pepper at least and maybe something else, like cumin.

This was outstanding. I made it as written but added about some cumin (less than a teaspoon) and used the zest of a whole orange (peeled with a vegetable peeler, avoiding the pith). The fragrance in the house was amazing. I think the original recipe expects this to be at a very brisk simmer; at the end of 1 1/2 hours there was still a lot of liquid in the pot, inches above the pork. I turned up the heat to boil it off & it did take more than 30 minutes.

Helpful tips:
-When portioning out the pork shoulder, trim excess fat and reserve. Place in roasting pan and roast at 325 degrees Fahrenheit to render the fat. Once fat is rendered out, strain and reserve. Added bonus of this step- pork crackling garnish
-After pork is cooked, strain and place in shallow roasting pan (reserve liquid). Shred meat (if desired) and drizzle with reserved rendered fat. Roast to crisp up the meat.
3. Take a cup of braise liquid, reduce by half, and use as sauce.

loved the recipe, the second time I made it I cooked it up to the point of 'Season with salt then continue . . ' in step 2, refrigerated it overnight and finished it off before guests came the next day, just as good. I removed the bay leaf and cinnamon stick after the dish cooled and didn't salt before refrigeration to make sure it didn't taste too salty when I cooked it off. It was excellent both times, definitely a go to recipe for a party.

I liked this a lot. When I made it, used a 4lb pork shoulder roast and brined it overnight, then covered w/ salt, pepper & a little oil, and seared the outside on the grill, just long enough to give it a nice caramel color. Then brought it inside and cut it into cubes and followed the instructions from there.
Also, simmering yielded a more tender meat. Boiling (if you get impatient with waiting for the water to evaporate) makes the pork a little dru.

Used hefeweizen instead of water, didn't trim off any of the fat before cooking AND I included all of the fat cubes in the pot. The rendered fat in the pot crisped the pork. Followed others' recs and added the spices AFTER I skimmed the scum. Included ~1.5tsp cumin. Agree that it takes longer for the liquid to boil off than the recipe suggests.

Zested two oranges to approximate the "7 strips orange zest."

Final product was DELICIOUS. I recommend it unequivocally.

Are you being serious and complimentary or joking around? Isn't whether it is good the point?