First things first – I just realized I have 999 followers on this here blog – how bonkers is that?! For something I started as what I thought might just be a short-lived hobby five years ago, it’s pretty awesome to still be rockin’ this blog and to have such a lovely group of people supporting me and this meatloaf thing. So thank you and cheers to y’all! Now, who will be the 1,000th. 🙂

Alrighty – onto this recipe. You guys, this is really, really damn good. Sir Dave found this recipe from Hip Cooking and – lucky me – decided to give it a go. We did a few tweaks to the recipe and how we serve, and it has landed in my favorite recipes of all time folder. I could honestly just eat these carnitas with a fork straight out of a bowl, and maybe I did. 😀 I hope you give this recipe a try and let me know what you think!

Cook time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Servings: 6

Ingredients
Carnitas
4 pound pork shoulder roast
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 tbs un-sweetened cocoa powder
1 tbs salt
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp coriander
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 large onion, finely chopped

Lime Sauce
3/4 cup sour cream
zest and juice of one lime
2 tbs chopped cilantro

*You can obviously top with whatever you’d like, but we dig chopped raw onions, salsa verde, the lime sauce above and chopped cilantro. YUM.

First up make the spice mixture. Then cut the roast into smaller pieces – think handful chunks. Rub the pieces with the spice mixture and chopped onion. The recipe does call to do this the day before and store in the fridge overnight, but we’ve always done it day of and it’s a-okay.

Next up, add the meat to a pre-heated pressure cooker and brown the roast pieces on all sides, doing in batches. Then add all the roast back to the pressure cooker, add enough water to just almost cover the meat, about 2-3 cups. Close and lock the lid of the pressure cooker.

For electric pressure cookers, cook for 50-60 minutes at high pressure and for stove top pressure cookers (which is what we have), turn the heat up to high and when the cooker indicates it has reached high pressure, lower the heat to maintain the pressure and cook for 45 minutes.

While the meat is cooking make the lime sauce by simply mixing the sour cream with the juice and zest of one lime and the cilantro.

Once the carnitas are done, for a stove-top cooker, move the pressure cooker to a cool burner and wait for the pressure to come down on its own, which takes about 10 minutes. For an electric pressure cooker, disengage the “keep warm” mode or unplug the cooker and open when the pressure indicator has gone down, about 20-30 minutes.

Remove the meat from the pressure cooker – and keep the leftover liquid – place the roast pieces on a large cutting board or platter. Begin pulling the meat with two forks.

Next up, reduce the cooking liquid in the cooker to half, by bringing to a boil and turning down to a simmer. Once reduced, strain the liquid and use a fat separator to remove the fat, set aside.

Last, get a cast iron skillet on medium-high heat, add the vegetable oil, and fry the shredded pork until it becomes slightly browned. Before serving, add some of the reserved liquid to the fried pork.

Serve on warmed tortillas or heap on nachos or layer in a breakfast burrito – whatever you do with this recipe, you will be lovin’ life.