Mesoamerica · Volume 05, Agave, Birria and the Manila Galleon Coast

Carnitas

Quiroga, Michoacán, Mexico

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: 4 hours

Researched: Researched from 65 sources in the brief, none yet linked in the text
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

by Quiroga, Michoacán, Mexico

The Spanish introduced goats and pigs into a landscape that had neither, and both introductions misfired at first in ways that produced this volume's two anchor dishes. Goats, bred without the predators or management that would have controlled them in Spain, overran the Jalisco countryside and devastated crops; the meat itself was considered tough and strong smelling. What tamed it was an indigenous cooking method applied to a new animal: a chile adobo and a covered earth pit, barbacoa logic, turned an unwanted animal into birria. Pigs, similarly new, met the same logic in Michoacán: cooking meat slowly in its own rendered fat was not a Spanish import either, it was an existing indigenous technique redirected at pork once pork existed to redirect it at. Carnitas is, mechanically, confit, arrived at independently in Michoacán, not a French idea that travelled.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Carnitas (Quiroga method)

Total cooking time close to four hours, traditionally over wood fire

Ingredients

An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.

1kg cueritos, pork skin, soaked first to soften
3kg lard, for rendering
1kg maciza, the lean leg meat
1kg costilla
espaldilla
500g cuero, the thicker skin
buche and nana, offal cuts specific to the region's full repertoire
thin cueritos, added only near the end
100g coarse salt, added only once the meat is fully cooked

Method

Render lard slowly in a copper cazo for its even heat conduction across large volumes.
Add the maciza first, then the costilla and espaldilla.
After roughly 20 minutes, add the thicker cuero.
Then add the buche and nana, offal cuts specific to the region's full repertoire.
Add the thin cueritos only near the end so they do not toughen.
Cook for close to four hours total, traditionally over wood fire.
Add salt only once the meat is fully cooked.

Notes

IMPI, Mexico's industrial property institute, has granted “carnitas michoacanas” a collective-mark certification specifically to protect this method: copper or food-grade stainless cazo, pigs of 100 to 130 kg, slow lard cooking, coarse salt only.

What a modern chef changes

Sous Vide in Rendered Fat, Stainless Substitute

Rung 01

Method

A UK copper cazo is not realistically sourceable, so run the confit-fry in a heavy stainless steel stockpot instead, the honest substitute rather than pretending the real vessel is an easy purchase.
Bring the pork to a precise internal doneness sous vide, held in its own rendered fat rather than water, before the final open-pot fry, which then exists purely to build the crisp, browned exterior rather than to cook the meat through.
Reserve a portion of the cueritos, dehydrate them, then fry them separately into a genuinely crisp cracklings garnish.

Open in the atlas: cook mode, scaling and tick off lists