mary.codes

Tonight, I made carnitas for the first time. I also made corn tortillas for the first time. Beginner's luck, I'm sure, but they came out great.

For the carnitas, I used the recipe for crispy slow cooker carnitas from Gimme Some Oven. I made a few changes to the recipe. I used a cup of pineapple juice and pineapple chunks instead of beer or chicken stock, and I also added some leftover chipotles in adobo sauce (about 4) because I needed to use them. I also used about 3 pounds of pork roast instead of 4 to 5. I'd used the rest of the pork loin for porkchops.

I left the pork in the slow cooker on high for about 5 hours. It came out a little bit dry, so I probably should've turned it off an hour earlier. I also was able to get all the shredded pork on one sheet tray.

To make the corn tortillas, I simply used the recipe on the back of the masa harina bag, but divided it by 4. I used 1/2 cup of masa, about 3/8 cup of water, and a dash of salt. I mixed it all together and divided the dough into 4 balls of about 1.25 oz each.

I don't have a tortilla press or plastic wrap (forgot to buy some), so I pressed the dough balls between two pieces of wax paper and a plate. The plate doesn't get the dough very thin, though, so I rolled out the tortillas even thinner with a rolling pin. I still think they may have been a little too thick in the center, because my tortillas began to split as I was eating the tacos.

I threw the tortillas on the electric griddle heated to 300F for about 30 seconds to a minute on each side.

I dressed my tacos with some diced sweet onion, cilantro, and queso fresco. The second taco got a dollop of sour cream. I think they turned out pretty great!