Epic Food Making

This is probably a little bit less than half. Straight from the pot, it was fantastic.

6 lbs of carnitas took 6 hours. And I'm still not done yet. Damn.

This came about because pork butt was on sale for .99/lb and I'm a sucker for a good sale. The internet told me that carnitas or a similar pulled pork was the way to go, so after a few hours of recipe scrutinizing, I figured out how I wanted to do it. I used a hybrid of David Lebovitz's recipe and a Cook's Illustrated recipe (registration required). I'll email my notes if you're interested. It's definitely a weekend project, and unfortunately, this particular method requires an oven, so I'm not sure if you can replicate it in Japan without some adjusting.

I've got some notes below, but those are mostly for me. And here are your icky pictures.

See, this is why I didn't originally include pictures. Gross.

You really can't tell with the steam and the terrible flash, but there was easily a 1/2 inch of oil and liquid fat kicking it on top. Wow.

5:40pm
Started with all the prep work (spice measuring, etc.)

7:40pm
In the oven. I know I wasn't browning the meat right (temperature too low, pot too small), but still, 6 pounds takes a long time.

10:25pm
Meat finished. It was interesting how the smells changed every half hour or so. It went from sweet (the citrus?) to smoky (the chili), to a little bit spicy (the cinnamon?). Fun. Watching the Cook's Illustrated video, I think I cooked the meat too long, because it fell apart in juicy flakes instead of staying in chunk form. Delicious, but could make the last step (braising on a rack) impossible.

11:40pm
Ready to go for a couple rounds of broiling tomorrow. The stupid liquid took 46 minutes to reduce, when the recipe said it would be 8-12 min. I'm pretty sure I doubled the recipe, but 46 minutes of stirring and praying it wasn't burning or melting my spatula was LAME.

Poor G was probably looking forward to a nice, slightly late meal. Instead, he cooked us some carrots and had a sandwich. Aw. Looking at all that meat, part of me is panicking, and wants to invite lots of people over to help eat it. It's silly, because I'm used to dealing with 5 lb chickens. The other part of me wants to hoard enough so that maybe next week, if I'm not too comatose from Thanksgiving, I can try making tamales.

Tomorrow, we feast!

[11/25 Edited to add photos. Sheesh.]