Literally The Best Tacos I've Ever Eaten...

what's up dude this carnitas recipe is born from an incredible story it's the story of a man who whittled himself down to literal Skin and Bones after working in one and two Michelin star restaurants for years and years he then took all that skill all that knowledge all that expertise and poured it into one thing tacos today we should all feel grateful to be schooled by a Carnitas master who just happens to also be my older brother Sean and as always there is no time to waste now let's go I first needed to chat with Sean in England from his restaurant Barrio comida where he makes these famous carnitas tacos after getting schooled on the technique and recipe to pull off these amazing tacos it was finally time to begin the first item on the agenda for Sean's carnitas recipe is to make the Carnitas salt which is a key ingredient in flavoring this pork to do this I'll start by toasting off cinnamon sticks that I broke into little pieces over medium low heat for three to four minutes at which point we'll add our aniseed and toast for another five minutes or until everything is nice and fragrant if you don't have aniseed on hand you could try star anise or is it Denise I don't know once toasted just dump out your spices into a mortar and pestle or spice grinder let them cool for about 10 minutes before grinding them into a fine powder all you need to do now is combine some kosher salt with some light brown sugar followed by your toasted spices and the last ingredient we need to add is some orange zest and by the way this technique you see me using right now to take the zest off this orange this is the best way to get the zest off of any citrus lemon lime orange whatever as you can see the result does the best job of just taking away that outer layer of zest without getting any of the white bitter underneath all that's left to do now is give everything a good mix and your Carnitas salt is complete and let me tell you something the smell of this is haunting and it's got me super excited to make this recipe at Sean's restaurant Barrio comida they use pork belly for their Carnitas which usually is not your typical choice but that's just what he's found works best at his restaurant you could use shoulder or you could use butt or another cut of your choice you could also go more authentic and get skin on pork belly so you get those multiple Textures in every bite however I'm just using what my brother uses so a skin off pork belly that's on the meteor side would be preferred so not too much fat all you need to do is cut your pork into rough fist-sized pieces the next thing to do is dust them with your Carnitas salt and he does three percent of the weight in salt to meat so if you're cooking a thousand grams of pork belly you'll be using 30 grams of Carnitas salt if you really don't want to weigh them out just give them a good heavy sprinkling of this seasoning and they will be just fine place them into the pot you'll be cooking them in a large Dutch oven type vessel will work best and place them in the fridge for two hours to sort of cure add sliced yellow onions crushed garlic and orange juice from the orange that we zested and of course some good old-fashioned Mexican Coke although we do not need this whole bottle the recipe will always be in the description but I used about one third of that bottle time to get in with your hands have a little fun and give this whole thing a good little mixy massage and the last ingredient we need to add is the lard of course you need lard to make good carnitas I used about two pounds of lard or just enough to cover these completely pop a lid on it and into the oven it goes at 285 degrees Fahrenheit that's 140 degrees Centigrade My Little Friends while our Carnitas are cooking we're gonna make chilies in escabeshi which is basically just pickled jalapenos and my brother showed me a really cool way to do this check it out to a pot at apple cider vinegar sugar salt bay leaf allspice and black peppercorn bring this mixture to a boil shut off the heat put a lid on it and let it sit for half an hour while that's it we can go ahead and prep our vegetables and if you watch my channel you definitely know how I feel about celery but look it's okay pickled I'm gonna pickle it you can slice it however you want I'm just going straight across and the most important thing you do here is just keep them all the same size coffee flower is next and with this one I'm just going to Simply slice it in half and then cut it into similar size pieces next up I have these very round looking carrots pretty cool right I didn't even know these things existed but I found them and I'm gonna pick them and with these I'm just going to take off the tops give them a wash and then slice them on the mandolin into these little coin shapes on another note you could ask a thousand chefs what the most important tools to have in the kitchen are they're all going to say you need a mandolin a link in the description you need to get one next up is just one whole onion and since I have the mandolin out I'm just gonna slice them into the same thickness pieces as those carrots before them and finally the jalapenos which I'm just gonna slice into coin sized pieces as well with a knife and I'm not sure whether or not I need to leave the seeds and I'm just going to go ahead and do it it seems fine to me straighten out it's pickling liquid and the spices have done their job you can now discard those put the pickling liquid back into the pot and we'll set that over the stove and bring it to a simmer the cool part about this pickling technique is you cook all the vegetables individually so you can get the snap and crunch just perfect of course some of this is personal preference I will give you my timing for each vegetable the celery took one one minute and five seconds at which point you want to get it out onto a tray and spread it out a little bit so it doesn't steam too much and overcook carrots next and with all these vegetables and doing them in smaller batches as to not overcrowd the pot too much the carrots are a little hardier so they took one minute and 50 seconds for me I did the cauliflower next and this one just took a little bit longer than the carrots so right around two minutes the onions need to be careful with because they will cook insanely quick I just did these for 30 seconds in the pot and lastly our nice spicy jalapenos these just took one minute even in order to keep your Escabeche really consistent in texture let your vegetables and your pickling liquid cool all the way down to room temp and once everything has been properly cooled down you can just put all your vegetable stuffed into a large mason jar like this and simply pour your pickling liquid over the top it doesn't matter if you're making tacos or not you're going to be really happy to have these pickled vegetables in your fridge and ready to go just let them sit for 24 hours first if you can there are two more components needed to complete these tacos the first is a bright green salsa verde this is going to be a fresh and acidic element along with the Escabeche that's really going to cut through that richness and fat of the pork the second component I will show you as we build the tacos it is super simple and makes a huge difference starting with some raw tomatillos cilantro garlic Serrano salt onion and Sean said he doesn't want his salsa tasting too limey so he adds just a little squeeze if any at all it really depends on the tomatillo itself avocado which is really going to thicken up your salsa and a couple of ice cubes which really help to keep this whole thing green while you blend it as these blenders can really heat things up and kill the color all you need to do now is blend that on high for one minute and boom your salsa is done and let me tell you that is so easy and so delicious just get that out into a tupperware container and pop it into the fridge to chill at this point our Carnitas have been cooking for two and a half hours and what we're looking for is to be able to insert a small metal skewer or a thermometer as I'm using here and we're just making sure that it slides in nice and easy just like butter time for phase two my friends which is to turn up the oven to 360 degrees Fahrenheit or 180 degrees Celsius pop the lid on return them back to the oven to keep cooking at this point you want to check on them about every 20 minutes what we're looking for here is this beautiful deep amber color that's going to come out my pork belly took another two and a half hours at this higher Temp and you can see it's jiggly and beautiful the skewer is just poking through it like soft butter it's insane just allow these to cool down in the liquid that they cooked in the last thing we need to do before building our tacos is to chop up our pickled vegetables so it looks like some nice fun confetti to build one of these glorious tacos just take some of your pork belly and chop it up into rough sized pieces on a board and here's a pro tip from my brother Sean to make sure your tacos don't look like they were made by a white person and it's very simple just take a little bit of paper towel and your tortilla over that and build the taco in your hand not on a plate he says this always makes your taco look way better and it also keeps it warm while you're building it which is pretty cool as well start with some of the pork belly down first of course followed by the Escabeche add your cilantro and your salsa verde and the final component as we talked about earlier is pork chicharron you can just buy some bagged if you want and that'll work just fine and crumble it on top I really sincerely hope a lot of you make this taco and get back at me in the comments because it is a truly balanced wonderful piece of art the pork belly itself is so rich and fatty and delicious and the salsa and pickled vegetables just balance out every bite perfectly and to have that crunchy chicharron on top to just tie everything together is really just insane my friends if my content has helped you in any way over the years please do me this one favor and go follow Barrio kamita's Instagram page the link will be down in the description and for the love of God if you are watching from the UK and you live in Newcastle you must go visit Durham and try this exceptional Mexican food for yourself and if you're just watching from anywhere else in the UK please right now text your friends who live in Newcastle and tell them to go eat at Barrio comida none of them will be disappointed let's see what this channel can do to blow up a restaurant that truly deserves it thank you until next time you know I'll love you when I'm out [Music] foreign

Channel: ThatDudeCanCook

Views: 135,708

Keywords: how to make carnitas, carnitas tacos, easy recipes, carnitas recipe, how to make carnitas de puerco, how to make carnitas tacos, how to make carnitas in the oven, pork tacos, street tacos, mexican food, homemade tacos, taco recipe, thatdudecancook, tacos recipe, carnitas slow cooker, carnitas tacos recipe, eat, yummy, recipe, food, how to cook, pork recipe, pork belly recipes, pork belly, how to make carnitas at home, how to make carnitas mexican style

Id: nWL_t3Lv8xE

Length: 8min 42sec (522 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 25 2023