Carnitas in our past, pot liquor in our future

Following up on last Thursday's Braised Pork Shoulder blog, it is turning out to be one of the all-time best Stretch Cooking recipes. The pork shoulder in the bag from CostCo turned out to be two six-pound hunks, individually wrapped. We were feeding eight people, so I only used one hunk. I cut the other one into entrée-sized hunks and they are now waiting in the freezer for future recipes, one of which will be "Carnitas Houston Style," that I found (and linked to) at Lisa Fain's "Homesick Texan" site.

Saturday's braised "carnitas" turned out to be fall-apart tender and (everyone said) delicious. I made one change to the recipe as I was cooking it. I bought a big bunch of cilantro for garnish, so I rinsed the whole bunch well, then cut off the stems below the rubber band and scattered these with the green pepper strips over the top of the pork. I wondered if the stems would lend their unique grassy pungency to the meat, and they did. I will never throw away cilantro stems again.

In the whole eight-quart pot, with six pounds of pork, a couple of onions, 10 garlic cloves, and the pepper strips and cilantro stems, there was only one cup of liquid at the beginning: the cup of leftover coffee I used to deglaze the pot. After three hours of simmering, enough pot liquor had evolved to almost cover the meat. There was at least two quarts. This liquid came from the pepper strips, the cilantro, and the pork itself. I took out all but one chunk of pork and broke it (or rather it fell apart in my hands) into serving pieces for the carnitas. Left in the pot was the one chunk, plus other smaller pieces that had fallen off during the simmering.

I put the whole pot in the refrigerator and next morning skimmed off a surprisingly thin layer of fat that had hardened on top. What was left was about two quarts of pork-studded, dark, savory, jellied stock that I froze in two batches with visions of some near-future stretch recipe involving potatoes, mushrooms, cabbage, zucchini, tortillas, or I don't know what.

One caveat. The stock is still a bit fatty, which is not necessarily a bad thing, if you are Texan. But next time I will go for a purer stock. Next time, I will strain the pot liquor, place it in a large saucepan, and refrigerate that. It will make for a much easier and more complete skim. The strained-out pork and vegetables I will have for breakfast the next day, migas-style. Let's see, for $17.46 for the meat, so far we have fed eight people at a party, have two quarts of stock in the freezer, had pork migas for breakfast, and we have six pounds of shoulder in the freezer, a couple of pounds of which are destined for Carnitas, Houston Style. What will I do with the other four pounds? Gives me something other than the economy to think about.