Tender pork to use for tacos, rice bowls, ramen, or quesadillas. Anywhere that you'd want tender meat, this would work. This can be made ahead of time and stored for when you want to add meat to a dish.
Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 3-4 hours
Ingredients
- 4 lbs. Pork Shoulder
- 1 Onion quartered
- 1 Orange quartered
- 8 cloves of garlic smashed with a knife
- 1.5 Tbsp salt
- 1/3 Cup oil
- Bay leaves and fresh oregano (optional)
- Cinnamon (Optional)
Directions
- Cut pork into large 2-inch cubes.
- Place pork and all additional ingredients into the pot making sure to squeeze the orange to release some of the juice.
If cooking in oven (Recommended)
- Set oven to 275 degrees.
- Add about 1/2 cup of water and stir ingredients around until salt is evenly distributed.
- Cover the pot and cook for 3-4 hours until tender, checking every 45 minutes to 1 hour to ensure it's cooking properly.
- Remove pan from oven and seperate the pork from the other ingredients and store in the fridge until ready to use.
If cooking on the stove
- Add 1 cup of water and stir ingredients around until salt is evenly distributed.
- Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cover the pot.
- Cover the pot and cook for 3-4 hours until tender, checking every 45 minutes to ensure it's cooking properly and nothing is burning.
- Remove pan from oven and seperate the pork from the other ingredients and store in the fridge until ready to use.
Tips
- Make sure you save some of the pork fat that is left over as it can be used for many other things. It always helps to have lard!
- When making tacos or other dishes I typically like to crisp the pork up in either a pan or in the oven.
- Additionally sometimes I just add uncrisped chunks to ramen with a bit of soy sauce and mirin.
- Because of how tender it is it can be shredded very easily and distributed evenly among other ingredients.