October Food was Carnitas

I did a nice amount of home cooking in October, but what turned everything upside down was my deciding to try out a carnitas recipe I found on seriouseats. Reading the recipe, I felt there was something going on there, so I decided to try it out. Maybe you saw my snapchat/Instagram story about it? Heavy production values there. 

As you may have seen in the video, just after I started roasting the pork, I got called into work. So I had to wait until the roasting was done, then I put the pork in the fridge to finish another day (the recipe said that would be ok).

The "another day" came that Saturday when Alexis and Angelique came over to help me finish the cooking and test what we wound up with. Here's the pork come out of the fridge. All I had to do was add the pork fat I had separated and held onto back to it and put it under the broiler and then, Wow. Things got serious.

I mean, maybe that looks burnt to you but actually it's just right.

There was a salsa verde recipe that came with the recipe but I used a different one from Alex Stupak's Taco cookbook that I had a hunch about. I was cooking on hunches all over the place.

And here's the spread, just before testing. But actually it really didn't need testing. I could have thrown it all out if my intent was really just to test it because it was 200% clear from just the smell that this recipe was dynamite and that the carnitas would be killer.

One taco of many many.

My helper guests. 9 months in my new apartment and finally having people over to eat!

Inspired and motivated by my success with the carnitas, the next morning I dared to cook chilaquiles from scratch from my leftovers. Those chips? I fried them out of my tortillas! They're not from a bag!

So, in conclusion: this carnitas recipe was great and is easy and makes the best carnitas imaginable. When I was in Utah this past week I whipped it up for Kristen's family and they were all nuts about it and then I brought it over to Grandma's the next day and she ate FOUR tacos. Four tacos! This pork is great! I'll make you a taco! Just ask!

Epilogue

I also wanted to show you these lentils I made, plus the Arby's pork belly sandwich, which was so good.