Sous Vide 36-hour Pork Carnitas
Finally found a delicious recipe over at Stefan’s Gourmet Blog for Pork Carnitas that turned out marvelously for a dinner party we had the other night. Everyone of our guests commented how juicy and tender the pork was. Winner! Due to laziness of not wanting to make our own pork stock in Stefan’s original recipe, we substituted chicken stock instead and the dish didn’t seem to miss a beat.
The hardest part of the recipe is freezing the chicken stock ahead of time so you can get a good vacuum seal with the pork shoulder. Without this step, you’ll either have a ton of air trapped in the vacuum sealed bag, or you’ll risk ruining your vacuum sealer by sucking up too much liquid into it. We recommend against using the water displacement method with a zip loc bag due to the long cook time. Longer cook times than a few hours have been the mortal enemy of ziploc bags in our kitchen and resulted in leaks.
This recipe as is is great to feed 4 adults, provided you have side dishes and easily scales up to more provided you have a big enough container for your sous vide bath. Our favorite is the 12-qt cambro container which is made of polycarbonate (so food safe) and easily fit 5 lbs of pork shoulder. You’d need the 18-qt version to scale up to large amounts of food/meat.
| Cook Time | 2400 minutes |
| Servings |
serving
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- 2.5 lbs pork shoulder , cut into cubes 1 - inchs
- 2 cups chicken stock
- 3 tsps achiote paste
- 1.5 tsps chipotle chile powder
- 1 onion medium , diced
- Salsa guacamole and for serving
- Corn tortillas
- to taste Salt
Ingredients
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- Freeze chicken stock into cubes (or in a ziploc bag) the day before. This is necessary to more easily vacuum seal.
- Heat sous vide bath to 149F/65F.
- Vacuum seal the pork shoulder cubes and frozen chicken stock in a bag. Recommend not using a ziploc bag for cooking as it will likely leak.
- Cook in sous vide bath for 36-40 hours.
- Dissolve the achiote paste in a 1/4 cup of boiling water. This is far easier than trying to dissolve it later.
- Remove the bag from the bath, and cut a small hole in the top corner and pour the accumulated juices and broth into a pot. Add the dissolved achiote paste and chipotle powder. Stir well.
- Return the bag back to the sous vide bath to keep the meat warm (you can turn off the sous vide machine).
- Using high heat, bring to a boil and reduce the mixture until it's thick like a runny gravy. Salt to taste.
- Turn off the heat, and add the pork shoulder and coat all the pieces with the sauce.
- Serve alongside warmed corn tortillas, diced onions, salsa and guacamole.
Notes
Recipe based on Stefan's original recipe. Photo courtesy of Stefan's Gourmet blog.
3 thoughts on “Sous Vide 36-hour Pork Carnitas”
Question about zip lock bags. In the above post you say not to use them for long cooking times. In a previous post of yours, “Cooking Sous Vide without a vacuum sealer”, you specifically mention the gallon zip lock freezer bags as working even for long cooking times. You also provide a link to purchase. Are you now saying you do not recommend them?
Thanks for catching the seeming contradiction. In our experience, cook times over 18 hours have the tendency to have ziploc bags leak. So over 18 hours, definitely use a vacuum sealer and the proper bags. For sub-18 hours, get high quality ziploc bags and you should be fine. (and if you’re worried, you can double bag them).
is the failure point the ziplock bag seal, or is it the wall of the bag? if it’s the seal, can you just clip it to the pot above the waterline and keep it from leaking?