general
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
coward
a mistake
You'll need a large pork shoulder (boneless would save you a lot of trouble since you're cutting it into ~2 inch cubes, precut would be even easier), salt, pepper, cinnamon, cumin, an orange, garlic cloves, bay leaves, and some sort of fat (I prefer lard but you could use olive oil or something similar)
So first you break down the pork shoulder to around 2 inch cubes (it should be around 3 pounds, adjust other measurements if it's more or less), then salt it (salting meat early gives it time to sink in and flavor the whole thing). Then preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Peel 8 garlic cloves, you can leave them whole, and put them in a mixing bowl along with the meat. Use a peeler to strip off all the skin of the orange and put it in the bowl (just the orange part, not the white fibers underneath), along with the juice of the orange too. Then throw in 2 bay leaves, a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of black pepper, and about a 1/4 cup of lard/oil of choice. Throw it in the oven for 3 and a half hours or until tender, covered (foil works if you have no lid). After it's cooked to your liking, remove it from the oven and separate the meat from the juice (there should be a lot of liquid in your cooking dish now). Then you put the meat back in the dish and spoon maybe 2 tablespoons of the cooking juices over to keep it moist, and broil it in the oven for around 5 minutes (putting it close to the heating element is ideal but be sure it doesn't burn). After that you can mash it up to your liking and enjoy.