Bumblebriar

We love carnitas, which just means little meats without respect to which variation, pork, chicken or beef – really who’s that picky?  Our favorite is Pork Carnitas, the best is home made that is for sure, along with of course the obligatory rice and beans.  We love to make a big bunch, and invite folks over and have enough to share with those who didn’t make it over.  So here is how we make it.

Your shopping list:

• 8-10 Lbs Pork butt cut up
• 1 large sweet onion, peel and rough chop – don’t worry they will cook down
• 3-4 cloves garlic, smash, rough chop
• 2-3 serano chilies (deseed and rough chop – keep the seeds if you want more heat)
• 2-3 jalapeno chilies (ditto)
• 1 can chopped tomato’s (not sauce or salsa)
• cumin
• chili powders (new mexico, california and pasilla powders – we just like this mix – if you have your favorites use them)
• Mexican Oregano

And the last 2 secret ingredients:

• 1 can evaporated milk (12 oz)
• 1 12 oz bottle or can coke (red can – not diet – accept no subsitutes!)

Take your meat, about 8 – 10 pounds Pork cuts, which are the heavily marbled cuts like the butt or picnic ham.  Winco even cuts and packages is as “carnitas” in case you can’t figure out which one you want.  Just make sure it’s not a lean cut – you need the fat marbling to make this good.  Put them in a large heavy pot, I like a big cast iron one I have because it carries the heat well.  Cut it into 3 inch sized chunks, don’t worry about the size – unless it’s one or two huge chunks.  Now dump it all in a pot.

Dump in all your stuff, the onions, garlic, chilies and tomato’s, rough chopped and all, spices on top.  Then pour your evaporated milk in – yes – dump it in.  Then on top of that your coke.  Trust me – it will be delicious.  

Start your engines, cook this on medium til it comes to a nice simmer.  Stir it around.  Put your lid on it and turn it down to let it simmer for about 3 hours.  The milk and the coke provide enough liquid, don’t worry.  A nicely marbled meat will also juice out and the meat breaks down nicely.

You will know it’s done when it is all dark (not burnt silly) and the meat has fallen apart. You may want to put it on a low simmer to eliminate some of the liquid.  I don’t add salt til the end when I can taste it.  The meat should have good flavor, not too spicy (unless you added the seeds).  It should be sweet from the coke as well.  And well, your house should smell pretty good.

Serve it with some nicely fried fresh corn tortillas – I don’t like flour for these.  Garnish your individual tacos with some nice pico, just chop up some sweet onion, chili’s cilantro and lime juice.  And of course my kids love queso fresco on it as well.  

Hopefully you had the beans cooking at the same time and some mexi rice going on the side…  We consider this soul food and love it!  I’d love to hear how it went for you.

Pin It

I love Pinterest!  I think it’s because I’m a visual person and I like to learn, so I love to wander through great blogs who are sharing some of their great experiences, ideas and of course recipes.  Pinterest uses the visual pinning from blogs and it has really captured my imagination.  I recently decided that instead of just pinning others pins, I’d actually try to make some of them.  

So this week, I’m doing a Pin a day from my pinboards.

Monday I made Cream of Anything Soup Mix as is the purpose of Pinterest it links back to the original blog One Orange Giraffe.  So I tried it, I made a quart jar of the Cream of Anything Soup mix, I think the key is the powdered Milk and Cornstarch ratio, the rest are really up to your individual tastes.  I modified mine with a bit of garlic and instead of the basil and thyme, I used a vegetable seasoning mix that had those in it and more, plus the dried onions and chicken bouillon.  

I made up the chicken, bacon and cheese casserole with the soup mix.  It’s a great mix of flavors, but I’d say the soup mix being made with Corn Starch is going to be a bit on the clear side – it isn’t milky even when cooked.  There is another Cream of Soup recipe mix available in Make a Mix cook books I’ll have to try out and compare, it uses a flour and powdered milk base.  

Regardless, the casserole itself looks and smells wonderful right now.  It’s dinner, and I think we will enjoy it – it certainly was easy to make, which really is the point of it. 

Pin It

I love easy recipes.  A couple years ago, I helped coordinate a large regional event for our Relief Society Organization.  The committee had to come up with a very simple menu to feed hundreds of women, an important component of course of any large gathering is the dessert.  No matter how bad the menu is, if you end with a fantastic dessert they will forgive all the rest.  If you don’t, they will remember it forever!  The dessert they chose was a very simple Banana Bars – initially I had a few negative thoughts of how that kind of dessert would go off.  I was wrong – I have repented!  and I asked for the recipe.  It remains one of my favorite easy to make recipes that will feed a large group.  perfect for when you have too many really ripe banana’s as well and don’t want to toss them.

Made a batch last night to finish off some bananas, and take a large platter to my husbands work.  Each year they buy all the school supplies for the employees kids.  It’s a nice gesture, we only have one left in school, high school at that and they had a hard time taking a “no thanks” from us this year.  So we’ll bring up some treats in exchange.

I had some crushed almonds left over from those Almond Joy Bars I made last week, so I sprinkled the rest on top of the cream cheese frosting.

Give it a try, it’s fast, simple and pretty darn good to eat as well!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/100zAhPuUQsN68fXwrk3gzOWQxaJlL6BLXWGP3VYhszI/edit?hl=en_US

Pin It