Pork Carnitas

These pork carnitas will give you maximum reward for minimum effort. This takes about 5 minutes of prep work and your slow cooker will do all the work. It has so much flavor, is incredibly tender and will make your whole house smell fantastic.

Pork Carnitas

(Recipe adapted from Allrecipes.com)

1 pork shoulder roast, 6-8 pounds

2 T chili powder

2 T ground cumin

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 T coarsely ground salt

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups apple cider

1 cup chicken stock

Put pork roast into a crock pot, you can cut it into smaller peices if necessary to make it fit. Mix spices in a small bowl and pat onto meat on top and sides. Pour cider and stock around the sides of the roast so you dont wash all the spices off the top. Cook on low for approximately 10 hours. The fat will easily pull off the top of the meat with a fork or spoon. Use 2 forks to shred the meat and remove the bone. It should just fall apart. Skim off some of the excess liquid, leaving about 1/2 - 1 cup in the crock pot and turn to warm until ready to serve. If you prefer you can also remove the roast before shredding the meat and just add about liquid as necessary to your serving dish. (I cooked mine all night and then turned it on warm about 9 am and served it about noon with no problems.)

Serve on tortillas with whatever toppings you want, I used finely diced jalepenos, red onion, and roasted red peppers with pepperjack cheese. This is also a perfect filling for enchiladas.

Note: I used a 6 qt. crock pot and a 7 1/2 pound roast. If you dont have a crock pot that big, adjust accordingly as mine was a little more than 3/4 of the way full.