Carnitas Tacos (YouTube vs Reality)

Carnitas Tacos (YouTube vs Reality)

00:00 Intro
00:52 Carnitas
02:30 Tortillas, Guacamole, Salsa
06:50 Final Assembly

Carnitas: https://youtu.be/aTwNgNh_Ig0
Corn Tortillas: https://youtu.be/FzRgwUO5Gd8

Salsa Verde:
12 oz (340g) tomatillos, husks removed
1/3 cup diced white onion (or to taste)
1 garlic close, sliced
Handful of cilantro, chopped
Jalapeño, sliced (to taste — it will be spicier with the seeds)
Salt to taste
1/4 tsp sugar

Put tomatillos on a foil lined metal baking sheet and broil on both sides until slightly burnt, 5-8 minutes per side. Cool, and peel off really burnt skin, but keep the skin that’s brown.

Combine with all the other ingredients and puree.

Guacamole:
1/4 cup diced white onion (or to taste)
Handful of cilantro, chopped
2 Tbsp lime juice (or to taste)
3 avocados
Salt to taste
1/4 cup salsa verde (from the above recipe)

Puree everything until creamy (I prefer it not perfectly smooth).

The skillets for the final assembly need to be non-stick. Teflon is most reliable, but well seasoned cast-iron or carbon steel work too. The bigger the skillets the faster and easier it will go. I prefer two 12 inch skillets. Crisp up the pork and remove to a plate. Crisp up the tortillas in pork fat. Top with guacamole, pork, salsa, diced white onions and cilantro.

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There is no shortage of carnitas tacos videos on YouTube. And for a good reason — they are delicious. But, what most videos show you how to assemble are two tacos and I cannot think of any situation where that would be sufficient. My family of 4 needs about 12.

If you have a flat top grill like they do in restaurants, assembling 12 tacos is a piece of cake. But if you are doing it on your stove top, it’s not that easy. At least if you want your tortillas not just warm, but also toasted in that delicious pork fat.

And if you are making everything from scratch (show all 4 components at once), it helps to have a plan of how to pull it off. So, today’s video is about the logistics and coordination of making carnitas tacos. Carnitas is just crisped up pork confit.

I strongly suggest you make it at least a day before making your tacos since it takes many hours in the oven. It only gets better with time. You can make it up to a week ahead and keep it in the fridge.

I already have a video about this amazingly tender and crispity-crunch pork, but here are a few new tips on this method. In the pork confit video, I suggest that you salt the pork overnight before cooking it. I have since tested putting it in the oven immediately after salting and it came out

Absolutely identical to the version with the pre-salting step. So do whatever works with your schedule. I have also tested it with a leaner pork shoulder since many of my viewers mentioned that their pork shoulder didn’t yield enough fat to cover the pork.

In the video, I used a pork shoulder that I got in a store that sold it with the fat cap on. Once that fat rendered during cooking, it submerged my pork almost completely. If you bought a pork shoulder without at least a 1/4 inch of fat on top, you can compensate

With about a cup of some other fat, like lard or some neutral oil like canola. I usually freeze the leftover fat from the pork shoulder when I cook it and use it the next time I cook this dish. Keep in mind that you don’t need the pork to end up completely submerged.

If some pieces stick out a bit, that’s fine. Tortillas, guacamole, and salsa verde taste tremendously better if you make them the day of serving. But the good news is that you can do it any time that day. You don’t have to serve them immediately.

I would give myself roughly an hour and a half to get it all done. Make your tortilla dough. Portion it. Cover it with a damp towel and let it rest. It needs at least 30 minutes, which is a perfect amount of time to make the salsa and guacamole. Here is the salsa.

Take the papery skin off your tomatillos. Place them on a foil lined metal baking sheet and place under the broiler until they get slightly charred. Keep in mind that broiling requires more than just setting your oven to broil.

You need to put the food right under the broiling element, so set your oven rack as close to it as possible. If you have an old gas stove, your broiler might be in a drawer under the oven. Tomatillos can take 5-8 minutes to brown depending on your broiler.

Flip the tomatillos over and brown them on the other side. They should look like this. While we are waiting for them to cool, let’s dice some white onion. According to Rick Bayless, white is the best onion to use in Mexican dishes because it offers a good crunch, but mild flavor.

I couldn’t agree more. As you can see, I was a bit indecisive about how much onion I should use, but eventually I settled on half an onion. We’ll need a garlic clove. You can either slice it or put it through a garlic press.

We’ll also need a sliced jalapeno pepper or a chili of your choice. If you want it milder, don’t use the seeds. And a handful of cilantro, coarsely chopped. For guacamole, we’ll need 3 avocados. I don’t really understand the technique of stabbing the pit with a knife to get it out.

I find it more difficult to get the knife out of the pit, than the pit out of the avocado. Let’s put jalapeno, garlic, a little bit of cilantro and about 2/3 of the onion into

A 2 cup pyrex for the salsa, and put the rest of the onion and cilantro into a 4 cup pyrex for guacamole. Obviously if you don’t have these pyrex measuring cups, use any bowl. If your avocados have any dark spots, remove them. Put your avocados into the larger of the two cups.

My tomatillos have cooled and are ready to use. I prefer to remove the skins that are really burnt, but keep the ones that are just brown. On bigger tomatillos, I’ll remove the stem too. Add them all to the cup with the jalapenos, garlic, and onions. Pour in all the juice too.

Add some salt and a tiny bit of sugar. I feel that it balances the acidity nicely. If I had really ripe tomatillos, I could get away without it, but these ones could really use a pinch of sugar. You can use any pureeing machine for this.

The easiest one to wash for me is the immersion blender, so that’s what I am using. Once your mixture looks like this, taste it for salt. I needed much more. Tomatillos are very acidic and if you want to have a good balance in a dish this sour,

You need the level of salt to match the level of acidity. Let’s puree in this salt and taste again. Now it’s better. Here is my cup with the onions, cilantro, and avocados for guacamole. I like to add a few spoonfuls of the salsa that I just made and a very generous amount

Of lime juice. In goes the salt, and I’ll puree it with the same blender I used for salsa. No need to wash it in between since all these ingredients are compatible. As always, taste and correct for salt and acidity. Put your salsa and guacamole into the fridge until you need them.

And now it’s time to press and cook the tortillas. Once your tortillas are done, cool them completely, wrap in a dry paper towel and place into a zip lock bag until you are ready to serve. The final assembly is the fastest, but also the most hectic part of this dish.

Start it about 15 minutes before you want to serve. Normally, I do it in two 12 inch skillets, but since not all stoves can handle two large pans, I’ll use a 12 inch and a 10 inch today. Set a large teflon or cast iron skillet over medium high heat.

There is no need to add extra fat, the pork has plenty of it. I measure it out by handfuls. So if I want 12 tacos, I add 12 handfuls. Obviously all hands are different, so use your judgment.

I am just saying that it’s easier to eyeball how much pork you want in one taco, than how much pork you want in 12 tacos. I let my pork cook until it starts to crisp up. Then I give it a stir and let it crisp up again.

While the second side is crisping up, I add a little pork fat to the second pan to toast my tortillas. A 10 inch pan fits 3. My pork crisped up again, and I can give it another stir. My tortillas are starting to get toasty and are ready to flip.

I only give them 20 seconds or so on the second side. I want this side to get hot, but stay soft. I’ll flip them back to the first side. That’s the one I want to get slightly crispy.

Ok, my tortillas are ready to come out and my pork is ready to come out as well. Now I have way more room to toast my tortillas. My 12 inch pan can fit 4 and my 10 inch pan can do 3. Give them a few flips.

When they are close, I turn off the pans, but keep the tortillas in them so that they stay hot. By the way, that serving platter you see in the back was warmed up in the oven before I started assembly. Tacos are small and can cool off quickly, so try to keep everything hot.

I wanted a pretty plating for the video, so I folded all the tacos to make one big platter. But you can make your life easier by placing 3 tacos on each dinner plate and keeping them open. At this point I realized that I am 2 tacos short.

I am so used to doing it in two 12 inch skillets that I miscounted. So I toasted two more tortillas. Guacamole, carnitas, salsa, and ta-da — 12 tacos. A little white onion and lime. I did eventually do cilantro too, but I forgot to film that on this big platter.

Was this a lot of work? Yes! Was it worth every minute — absolutely! Here are more very detailed culinary tutorials for you to check out and if you are ever in the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.