Thanks to my friend TJ, guru of New Mexico cooking, for passing along this great recipe. It’s all the things I love about cooking – cheap, delicious, really easy to make, really hard to screw up, and easily customizable to particular tastes.
It’s adapted from a book called “Hungry Monkey”. I made some minor adaptations to the initial recipe. First, because I’m an idiot and did some stuff wrong. Second, because I like to make things simple and easy. Third, because I like to put things in the way I want them. I added the chile, the cilantro and serving in the tortillas. Obviously you could add cheese, tomatoes or some other food you like.
This is really one of my favorite cooking principles – cook with food that you like. Don’t add peppers if you don’t like peppers – switch it to something else. You don’t enjoy it, you won’t eat it, then you’ll be back picking up chinese and eating cereal for dinner.
Carnitas
3 lbs boneless pork shoulder or country style ribs, trimmed and cut into 1 inch cubes
1 large onion diced (chopped into small chunks)
1 cup chicken broth (i used a small can)
1/4 cup tequila
2 tbs lime juice from a lime (squeezed)
salt and pepper (add to boiling water – be generous)
small tortillas
1 bundle of cilantro (chopped)
2 cans of old el paso green chile
1. combine all the ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered 2-3 hrs until the meat is tender (i did 2 hours), and the broth is evaporated (if necessary, turn up the heat near the end of cooking to evaporate the rest of the broth.) at this point you may optionally refrigerate the carnitas before continuing. they will keep several days in the fridge.
2. ONLY DO THIS IF YOU ARE EATING NOW – heat a large nonstick skillet over high heat. add the carnitas and cook, stirring occasionally until they are heated through and well browned. even burt or crispy in places.
3. Heat tortillas in microwave for 30 seconds. Put carnitas, chile (generous spoonful) and cilantro (generous spoonful) into tortilla. Enjoy
I love that you can cook, this for yourself and all it takes is a simple pan cooking (5 mins max) to prepare this for the next eating. Leftovers are awesome.
Here’s how mine came out:
I chopped the pepper into tiny pieces, opened all the cans of tuna, then heated them up together in a nonstick pan.
I took the tortillas, put the pepper/tuna mixture in the center, topped it until covered with spinach, then added some cilantro on top. I rolled the tortillas up and placed them into a pyrex pan.
I covered the enchiladas in the taco cheese and baked at 400 (approximately, i don’t really pay attention to this exactly) until the cheese melted and the exposed tortilla started to look crispy.
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