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Country Style Pork Spareribs Carnitas Tacos | Cook Better Than Most Restaurants

Country Style Pork Spareribs Carnitas Tacos

Cuisine tacos

Ingredients

Carnitas

  • 3 lbs of country style spareribs
  • 1 large onion quarter
  • 4-6 smashed cloves of garlic
  • Cumin
  • Adobo Season Salt
  • Paprika
  • Bay leaf
  • Black pepper
  • Granulated garlic

Braising liquid

  • ½ cup lemon or lime juice
  • ¼ cup orange juice
  • Drizzle of olive oil
  • Water to cover the meat

Pickled Onions

  • One red onion thinly sliced
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ cup white vinegar
  • ¼ lemon juice from the jar is fine
  • Half a jalapeno thinly sliced
  • 6 black peppercorns
  • 1-2 cloves of smashed garlic

Cilantro Relish

  • ½ cup Fresh cilantro chopped
  • Half a Red onion diced
  • 1 Fresh jalapeno diced

Accompaniments

  • 2-3 Avocado
  • Lime wedges
  • 6-8 Tortillas traditionally corn, but we like flour

Instructions

Pork Carnitas

  1. Dust all sides of your pork with the dry spices, be generous this is where you meat is going to get most of its flavors. Then place the spareribs in a single layer in a big heavy bottomed Dutch oven. Add the bay leaf, garlic, and onion to the pot. Then add the braising liquid, only use enough water to just cover the meat. Put the meat on the stove top without a lid and let it simmer for at least 3-4 hours.

  2. Don’t mess with the meat. Let the braising liquid reduce all day until only the fat from the pork remains in the bottom of the pan. At this point you can turn off the heat, put the lid on the meat and just let it sit on the stove top until you are ready to eat. You could even put the pot into the refrigerator overnight, just don’t discard the drippings in bottom of the pan.

  3. Preheat your broiler to high. When you are ready to eat remove the meat from the pan and give it a rough chop. I also chopped up the onions but discarded the garlic.
  4. Return the meat to the pan, salt for flavor, and stir it well coating it with the wonderful fat from the bottom of the pan. If you have stored your carnitas overnight in the fridge after braising you may need to heat the fat up on the stove top before you mix up the chopped meats and the fat. Place your pot of carnitas under the broiler until the top of the meat gets crispy and brown. When they come out they ready to eat!

Pickled Red Onion

  1. In a microwave safe container mix all the sugar, salt, vinegar and lemon juice, heat in the microwave just until hot. Stir until sugar and salt dissolve. In a non-reactive bowl put you thinly sliced onion, pepper corns, hot peppers, and garlic. If you like spice feel free to add more jalapeño or switch it up and go with habanero peppers. Then pour the hot vinegar over the onions and stir. Pickled onions only get better with time so feel free to make them in advance and store them in the fridge. Don’t forget to fish out the peppercorns before you serve, someone could break a tooth.

Cilantro Relish

  1. Mix all the diced ingredients together and if you can find it feel free to add one or two tomatillos. I don’t add any lime juice or salt to this relish mostly because there is plenty of salt and lime on the carnitas, but if you use this for anything else you may want to add some of both.
  2. Now you can just build a taco with all the accompaniments and enjoy pork bliss.