Green Chile Carnitas
1 pork roast (the cheapest one you can find with plenty of fat)
1 jar Green Chile Sauce or Salsa Verde
Couple Tbsp Oil
Salt & Pepper
Season the pork with salt and pepper. Coat the bottom of a deep skillet or pot with oil and brown both sides of the roast over HIGH heat.
Now you have some options, you can either leave it in the pot on the stove, cover it with green chile sauce or salsa verde, turn the heat way down and let it go or you can throw the browned roast & jar of sauce or salsa in a crock pot set to LOW. The crock pot method is what I prefer as it gives me the freedom to leave the house to go meet my high-society ladies for lunch, get my weekly massage-mani-pedi combo, volunteer at the soup kitchen . . . you know, just the regular stuff. You’re gonna need to make some plans because it takes 6-8 hours for the meat to get nice & tender.
When it gets to the point where you poke it with a fork and it spontaneously falls apart, it’s ready. You can then take it out of the pot and separate the juicy bits of meat from the slimy bits of fat and other such yuckiness. Discard the yuckiness, shred the meatiness and put it back in the pot with the juices. The possibilities are now endless as to what you can do with this meaty sauce. I use it, mainly, in the 3 following ways:
Poured over Cheese Enchiladas
Poured over Chiles Rellenos
Piggy Papas (potatoes for you Gringo type)
Piggy Papas
serves 4
2 cups Green Chile Carnitas
4 Large Potatoes
3 Tbsp Vegetable or Canola Oil
2 Tbsp Butter
4 Large Eggs
1 cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Salt & Pepper
Instructions
We’re going to fry potatoes. This is how we do it, baby. (sorry for the 90′s song reference, sometimes that stuff just comes out) Peel & cube the potatoes , place them in a microwave safe dish with 1/2 inch of water, microwave on HIGH for 2-3 minutes just to steam them and soften them slightly. Drain off the water and dry the potatoes off with a paper towel. Meanwhile, over MED-HIGH heat, melt 1 Tbsp of butter with the 3 Tbsp of Oil in a large heavy skillet. Add the potatoes, season them up with plenty of salt and pepper, stir them around to get them all coated in the oil/butter then LEAVE THEM ALONE. This is the ONLY way to get color on your potatoes, you can’t be stirring and fiddling with them all the time, you have to let them sit and do their thing. After about 5 minutes, you can stir them around a little just to get the browning going on the other side. Let them sit, unfiddled with, for another 5 minutes. When the potatoes are pretty much done, spread the Green Chile Carnitas over the top and then add the cheese. Pile it high and deep, that’s what I always say when it comes to cheese. Cover with a lid and let the cheese do it’s melting thing. Meanwhile, melt the other Tbsp of butter and cook your eggs. I would “heart” sunny-side up eggs for this dish, but Mr. Geek doesn’t groove on the super-runny yolks thing, so we compromise and do over-medium. Top the skillet of papas (remember what this means?) with your 4 eggs and dig in.
By the way, this is BREAKFAST in New Mexico terms. We’re not scones and fruit breakfast kind of folks. We’re spicy, meat-filled, beans-on-the-side or rolled up in a tortilla breakfast kind of folks.
:D’anne
