Slow Cooker Crispy Garlic Citrus Carnitas

If you haven’t guessed by now, the favorite meals in the Slow Cooker Gourmet house usually revolve around bowl of rice with some kind of meat or vegetables and any different number of toppings.  I won’t bombard you with links here, but if you look around at my recipes you will see that common theme.  So how is it I’d never in all this time gotten around to making carnitas?!?  Well, I finally did and wow!  We’ve been missing out!!

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And really?  Who doesn’t love being able to throw a big hunk of meat in the crock and let it cook all day… and with hardly any work at all be able to have a delicious dinner?  Slow Cooker Crispy Garlic Citrus Carnitas have just the right amount of flavor and spice that they can be appealing to the grownup and the kids!

You have a couple of options when you make these carnitas for how you can finish them off.  My recommendation is that once you shred them you return them to the crock to soak up all the sauce.  Then you line a cookie sheet with foil and spread the meat out on the pan.  Then place it under the broiler for a few minutes until the meat start to become crispy on the ends.  Mine took about 10 minutes.  It was totally worth the few extra minutes and the clean up was easy with the foil.

The other option would be to remove the meat and shred it.  Then strain out the sauce that is left in the crock and use it as a drizzle over the meat.  And really there is the third option of shredding the meat right in the sauce and serving it just like that.  It will also be very tasty, I just feel like the meat loses a little to much texture this way for my liking.

You can serve this over steamed rice, in tortillas as tacos, in burritos, over chips as nachos, or really any way you can imagine!  Like I said, we love things over rice so this is how we had ours.  I served it simply with shredded cheese, sour cream, and guacamole.  But really the options are endless!  Choose your favorites for your new favorite meal!