Here is another slow-cooker recipe. This one was the biggest success of my three recent slow-cooker experiments.
Components: a 5+ pound pork loin center roast, meaning it had five big ol' bones in it, and a thin layer of fat on the top. I sliced down to the bone from the fat between the vertebra (don't try to cut the bone) to make cooking more even, generously dusted with chipotle powder, granulated garlic, cumin, and just a whisper of cayenne; then added a large sweet onion, sectioned in eighths, and two sliced cloves of "elephant" garlic; then added a good 2 tbsp of dried shallots, an 8-oz can of diced tomato and green peppers, and an 8-oz can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Oh, and don't tell your cardiologist, but maybe a tablespoon of ... bacon fat.
Heat through on High for about 45 minutes, reduce heat to Low, and go to work. If someone can turn it about six hours in, that is great, but not a requirement.
Around ten hours after starting, this will be ready to shake off the bones, pick out the chipotles (you'll thank me later), and shred the meat. Let it soak for a while, serve, and eat. With sour cream or queso fresco and/or rice and/or bread. And beer. It's spicy as hell.
Or eat a peanut-butter sandwich and let this consider its sins for a while.
On Day Two, turn out the carnitas into a big stock pot, stir in a can of pumpkin and about an ounce of cream or half-and-half, and heat through. This will magically transform the Wicked Witch of the Pig into what may well be the best, most virtuous pig I've ever cooked. I liked the flavor profile before adding the pumpkin, but for me the heat level overcame the flavor. Adding the pumpkin - a tip courtesy of CheapHealthyGood, btw - really did the trick.
p.s. if you like your spicy foods on the nuclear end of the spectrum, you can skip the whole picking-out-the-chipotles thing. You've been warned!
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