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Cuban Pork: Day 1
Ingredients:
- 1 (8-1o pound) bone-in pork shoulder, make sure it fits into your slow-cooker. Cut to fit if necessary.
- 1/2 cup frozen 100% orange juice concentrate
- 1/3 cup lime juice (fresh squeezed or bottled)
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- 8 whole peeled cloves fresh garlic (or 1 Tablespoon granulated dried garlic)
- 1 Tablespoon (or more, to taste) ground cumin
- 1 Tablespoon dry oregano leaves
- 1 Tablespoon or more fresh ground pepper
- 2 teaspoons kosher or sea salt
- 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, optional
- if available, 2 stems (no leaves, just stems) fresh cilantro
Drizzle the olive oil in the slow-cooker bowl. Place untrimmed pork, fat side down in the bowl then flip fat side up. Toss garlic cloves in around the roast and sprinkle with salt, pepper, cumin, oregano and crushed red pepper flakes. Use a spoon to dollop the frozen orange juice concentrate over the top of the roast. Pour the lime juice around the edges of the roast, toss on cilantro stems- if using, cover, and turn cooker to ‘HIGH’. Allow to cook for 1 hour, turn the heat to ‘LOW’ and continue cooking for another 12 hours or until meat falls apart when prodded with a fork. When the meat is tender, turn off slow cooker and place the slow cooker bowl in the fridge. (If your slow-cooker doesn’t have a removable insert, transfer the contents to a large container with a tight-fitting lid and pop that into the fridge.
See you back here on Thursday for shredding and saucing the pork and the first of our side dishes: spicy black beans!