Street taco on organic corn tortilla with onions and cilantro.
Carnitas — "little meats" — are pork braised in lard or its own fat at low temperature until it is completely yielding, then raised to high heat at the end until the exterior caramelizes and crisps. The result is pork that is simultaneously soft enough to shred with a fork and slightly crispy at the edges — a texture combination that exists almost nowhere else in cooking. The technique is from Michoacán, where large copper cauldrons called cazos are used to cook entire pigs over wood fires for hours. The pork gets everything: shoulder, belly, ribs, skin, liver. All of it goes into the cazo together. The restaurant version works in a Dutch oven or heavy pot, but the principle is the same — low and slow in fat, then high heat to finish.