Okay, this Slow Cooker Carnitas recipe might be the best thing I’ve ever made in my slow cooker. No joke. The combination of the warm spices, orange essence, and richness of the slowly cooked pulled pork is absolutely to die for. I hereby retire my chili rubbed pork recipe in favor of these Slow Cooker Carnitas. I need a stash of this flavorful and tender pulled pork in my freezer at all times for tacos, burritos, and NACHOS. Oh yes, the nachos I could make with this pork would be EPIC. And you just won’t believe how easy it is to make carnitas with a slow cooker! Let’s go!
What is Carnitas?
Carnitas, which translates to “little meats”, is a Mexican pulled pork flavored with warm spices and orange. The dish is traditionally made with a fat-marbled cut of pork, like a Boston butt or picnic roast, which gives the meat an incredibly rich flavor and tender mouthfeel. The pulled pork is often used for tacos, burritos, taquitos, and more.
Ingredients for Carnitas
You don’t need a lot of ingredients to make slow cooker carnitas that are full of flavor and deliciously tender. Here’s what you’ll need for this recipe:
- Pork: Choose a fatty cut of pork like Boston butt or a picnic roast. The marbled fat is essential to create the correct flavor and texture in this slow cooked pulled pork.
- Onion and Garlic: These classic savory aromatics create a deep savory base for the flavor profile.
- Spices: A combination of warm spices like cinnamon, chipotle (smoked jalapeño), cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper give carnitas its intense and aromatic flavor.
- Orange: The subtle fresh citrus flavor of orange peels and sweetness from the orange juice provide a nice contrast to the warm spices, keeping the overall flavor profile complex and interesting.
How to Make Carnitas Tender and Crispy
One of the reasons carnitas are so good is the tender texture with crispy edges. Cooking the pork low and slow creates a tender meat that shreds easily, but finishing the pork in a skillet, and frying the pork in its own rendered fat, creates crispy edges. It’s best to fry the slow-cooked meat just before serving to get the best crispy edges.
Instant Pot Carnitas
This slow cooker carnitas recipe converts very easily to an Instant Pot. To make Instant Pot carnitas, simply layer all of the ingredients in the Instant Pot like you would in the slow cooker, secure the lid, and cook on high pressure for about 50 minutes. Natural release, shred, and crisp up the meat in a skillet as usual.
How to Serve Slow Cooker Carnitas
This delicious Mexican pulled pork is so good in everything, you will be so happy to have some stashed in your freezer. Try using your carnitas for burritos, tacos, taco salads, nachos, pulled pork sandwiches, quesadillas, and burrito bowls.
To make your carnitas into a full meal, try topping them with some pickled red onions or spicy pickled carrots, and adding some cumin lime roasted sweet potatoes, or corn and avocado salad on the side! And you might as well add some chips and guacamole too!
How to Store and Reheat Leftovers
This recipe has become one of my absolute favorites for meal prep! It freezes well so I can make a huge batch and portion it out as needed before freezing. After cooking, divide and transfer the pulled pork to food storage containers, with the juices, and chill completely in the refrigerator. Once chilled the carnitas will stay good in the refrigerator for about five days, or it can be transferred to the freezer and stored for about three months.
To reheat carnitas from the refrigerator, place the meat in a hot skillet and cook over medium until the liquid evaporates, the meat is heated through, and the edges have become crispy. To reheat from frozen, first allow the meat to thaw overnight in the refrigerator, then reheat in the same manner as the refrigerated carnitas.
Slow Cooker Carnitas
Servings 8Ingredients
- 1 yellow onion ($0.32)
- 4 cloves garlic ($0.32)
- 2 small cinnamon sticks ($0.95)
- 1/2 Tbsp oregano ($0.08)
- 1/2 Tbsp cumin ($0.08)
- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.02)
- Freshly cracked pepper ($0.05)
- 1/2 tsp chipotle pepper powder ($0.05)
- 3 lbs pork butt roast ($5.26)
- 2 small oranges ($0.67)
Instructions
- Dice the onion and peel the garlic cloves. Place the onion, garlic, and cinnamon sticks in the bottom of the slow cooker.
- In a small bowl, combine the oregano, cumin, salt, pepper, and chipotle powder. Cut the pork roast into 2-inch cubes. Place the cubed meat in a bowl and sprinkle the spice mix over top. Toss the meat in the spices until evenly coated. Place the seasoned meat in the slow cooker on top of the onion, garlic, and cinnamon.
- Use a vegetable peeler to remove the thin layer of orange zest from one of the oranges. Squeeze about 1/2 cup juice from the oranges. Pour the orange juice over the meat in the slow cooker, than sprinkle the pieces of orange zest over top.
- Place a lid on the slow cooker, turn it on to high, and cook for 5 hours, or until the meat is tender and falls apart.
- Use tongs to stir and shred the meat, and remove the cinnamon sticks. Either divide the meat and liquid into smaller containers to refrigerate for later, or transfer the meat and some of the liquid to a skillet (preferably non-stick or cast iron). Cook the meat over medium flame until browned and crispy on the edges. Avoid stirring the meat too much as it will break down into tiny pieces. Use the crispy meat as a filling for tacos, burritos, nachos, or burrito bowls.
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Equipment
Notes
Nutrition
How to Make Slow Cooker Carnitas – Step by Step Photos
Dice one yellow onion and peel four cloves of garlic. Place the diced onion, garlic cloves, and two small cinnamon sticks in the bottom of the slow cooker.
These are the cinnamon sticks I use. These little packets of four small sticks are found in the Hispanic food section of my local grocery store and only cost $1.89. So, if cinnamon sticks are expensive in the spice aisle, check the international foods aisle as well.
In a small bowl stir together 1/2 Tbsp oregano, 1/2 Tbsp cumin 1/2 tsp salt, some freshly cracked pepper, and 1/2 tsp chipotle pepper powder.
You’ll also need one pork butt roast, about 3 lbs. If you use a bone-in roast, just get one slightly larger than 3 lbs. and don’t forget to pull the bones out after cooking.
Cut the pork into 2-inch cubes, place them in a bowl, and sprinkle the spice mix over top. Toss the meat cubes in the spices until they’re evenly coated, then place them in the slow cooker on top of the onion, garlic, and cinnamon.
Use a vegetable peeler to remove the zest from one of the oranges. You want to get all the nice orange parts with the fragrant oils, but not the white pith, which can be bitter. Also, juice the oranges. You need about 1/2 cup juice.
Pour the orange juice over the meat…
And add the orange peels on top of the pork.
Place the lid on the slow cooker, turn it on to high, and cook for 5 hours. See how much liquid comes out of the meat? That’s good stuff right there.
Use a pair of tongs to stir and shred the meat. Fish out the cinnamon sticks (and bones, if you used a bone-in roast) at this time. You can serve the meat just as it is, or you can crisp it up in a skillet.
OR you can refrigerate it or freeze it for later. If refrigerating/freezing, I highly recommend dividing the meat up into smaller portions before refrigerating (store it with the cooking juices). This helps it cool faster and prevents food safety issues. If you want to freeze some of it, let it chill in the refrigerator overnight before transferring to the freezer.
To make the carnitas crispy, just cook it in a skillet with some of the juices (because you need the fat from the slow cooker to basically fry the meat) until it’s crispy. I recommend doing this in some sort of non-stick skillet though, like cast iron, ceramic, or Teflon, because the liquified collagen likes to stick to and coat stainless steel.
And that’s basically it! It’s just that easy to make tender, juicy, and FLAVORFUL slow cooker carnitas.
Absolutely delicious, we couldn’t get enough! Reading through the recipe it didn’t seem like nearly enough spices for the amount of meat. I got about 3.5 lb of pork butt and made 3x the seasoning so I could cover the meat with the amount of seasonings that felt right. Definately recommend scaling up the spices and seasoning the meat based on sight—I imagine this would’ve been pretty bland if I hadn’t.
Why would you give it 5 stars if you would think it was bland as written? If you make changes and rate “your recipe” then 4 stars would seem more appropriate, right?
These where good but WOW slow cooking takes FOREVER!! Is they’re a microwave version?
The slow cooking is where the magic happens. ;)
This was amazing!
I used a little ground cinnamon instead of cinnamon sticks and it subbed in just fine! Will definitely keep this on my list of go-to slow cooker recipes.
I thought this was pretty good. Ultimately, I felt that it was missing some acid, which I made up for with some salsa verde and a squeeze of lime juice. I thought the orange and cinnamon flavors were both a little on the overwhelming side. I’ll make this again, but will try to liven up the dry spices and possibly omit the cinnamon altogether.
These turned out amazing!!
I haven’t heard my husband rave about my cooking as much as he did this recipe
Hi, I only have chipotle chili flakes. Should I grind these down or leave whole and any tweaks in recommended tsps?
While flakes would work, I don’t know how much to suggest without testing it, so your safest bet would be to grind them down to a powder then use the amount listed in the recipe.
Love this! Love all your recipes. Thank you for sharing them. I cooked this one today. So yummy! I have to say though, the price for the meats are often way off. I paid $10 for this pork. That’s double the suggested amount of $5. Maybe because I live in New York? Oh well… totally with it, but not a budget-break meal.
I subbed chipotle powder with a few chipotle peppers in adobo that I had in my freezer. I blended them and then strained the liquid out to avoid seeds. The flavor was good, definitely not too cinnamon-y.
I had some difficulty with the last step of transferring meat to a skillet. I ended up with a lot of liquid in the cast iron since I didn’t want to lose any meat in the juices, so that had to simmer down for quite awhile.
Served with the warm avocado corn salad recipe as suggested on the top of the page, with toasted corn tortillas.
If I don’t have cinnamon sticks, what would be the equivalent in ground cinnamon?
You can just use a teaspoon or so.
Hi! Asking because I’m really good at messing things up…. it looks like there is very little liquid added to this recipe (just the OJ). It’s making me nervous because other recipes call for chicken stock. I see it does juice up on its own, though. To clarify and give me peace of mind, there are no issues starting it out with just the OJ as the only liquid? *I’m a newbie chef and newbie wife so I rly don’t want to mess this up!
Update to my own question: it turned out great!
I want to make these for the Poor Man’s Burrito Bowls, but unfortunately the store was out of raw pork butt and only had the fully cooked/water added version. Any tips on how to make this with an already cooked piece of pork? Thanks!
You could season it in a skillet to reheat. Then you can still assemble the bowls like the recipe.
I’m thinking about trying this with a venison roast to make venison tacos! Have you ever cooked with venison? Does that sound too crazy?
Not crazy at all Rachael! We have a freezer full of venison ourselves. I haven’t tried this specific recipe with a venison roast yet, but it does go great with these flavors. My suggestion though would be to cook it on low for 8 hours instead of high for 5. There’s less fat with the venison so it needs that extra time to really break down. Enjoy!
I normally love all your recipes, but I thought the cinnamon in this one completely overpowered everything else and kind of ruined the dish. Did I do something wrong or am I just overly sensitive to the cinnamon flavor here?
Hi Dan! I’m sorry that it didn’t turn out for you. Did you perhaps leave the cinnamon sticks in while shredding the meat? Your sticks could have been larger than what Beth used for the recipe too and created more of an overpowering flavor. Maybe just try one next time and see if it gets better?