Monday, March 21, 2011

Carnitas by Calamity Jeanne

This afternoon I dusted off an old recipe for carnitas. It's one I basically cobbled together from two recipes out of two different library-loan cookbooks back when I lived in Silver Bay 20 years ago. I used boneless country-style ribs: simmered the wee out of them in water with a sliced onion and some ground cumin and dried oregano, then removed them from the broth, salted them and baked them in a 350F oven until browned, then allowed them to cool and cubed the meat, then put the meat cubes back into the baking dish, seasoned them well with cumin, oregano, chili powder and garlic powder, dumped in the onions from the cooking stock as well as a cup or so of the stock, covered it with foil, and let it bake for another 45 minutes. The meat is amazingly tender. I serve it on soft corn tortillas spread with refried beans, rolled up like taquitos, with Mexican rice on the side.