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How much do you love easy, flavorful dinners that everyone loves to eat? Sometimes it feels like a huge feat to find foods that the whole family will devour but these Green Chili Pork Carnitas Tacos may be the answer.
The beauty of these green chili pork tacos is that they are super simple! This pork carnitas meat is slow cooked in a crockpot or instant pot, which creates tender, melt-in-your-mouth pork. If you aren’t a pork lover, you can always substitute chicken.
The Green Chili Pork Carnitas is made with a lean pork loin roast, onion, jalapenos, green chilies, freshly squeezed orange juice, and freshly squeezed lime juice. It is cooked low and slow in a slow cooker for about 8 hours. You can also cook it on high for about 5 hours, or until tender.
Another key part of developing the pork flavor is to sear the meat in a skillet on high heat for several minutes. This helps create a nice crust on the outside and pull out some of the natural flavor from the pork. All you do is drizzle the skillet with a little oil and cook on all sides until you start to see some good color. Then you remove the pork loin from the skillet and place it in the slow cooker to make it perfectly tender.
Once the green chili pork is cooked to perfection, take two forks and shred the pork into bite size pieces. Taste and season accordingly. You may want to add a little more salt and pepper, depending on your preferences.
Now it’s the fun part — let’s put this green chili pork carnitas into a taco! You can use either corn or flour tortillas. Fill the tortilla with the carnitas and top with your favorite Mexican cheese, such as queso fresco, cotija, or quesadilla cheese. You can also use pepper jack or monterey jack cheese. Top with guacamole (homemade recipe here) or fresh avocado slices and cilantro. Drizzle with homemade green tomatillo salsa, if you prefer (tomatillo salsa recipe here).
These Green Chili Pork Carnitas Tacos can be made ahead of time and are perfect for leftovers. It is such an easy weeknight dinner for busy nights.
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Green Chili Pork Carnitas Tacos
Ingredients
Green Chili Pork Carnitas:
- 1 - 3-4 lb. Pork Loin Roast
- 1 Tablespoon Oil
- 1 Onion diced
- 2 Jalapenos diced
- (2) 4-ounce cans Diced Green Chilies
- 2 teaspoons Garlic Salt
- 1 teaspoon Pepper
- 1 Tablespoon Cumin Powder
- 3/4 cup Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice
- 1 Lime juiced
- 12 Corn Tortillas
- 8 ounce Queso Fresco or Pepper Jack Cheese crumbled or shredded
- Guacamole or Avocado sliced
- 1/2 bunch Cilantro chopped
Instructions
- Heat large skillet to high heat. Add oil and heat for 1-2 minutes.
- Add pork loin roast and cook for 5 minutes per side, until golden brown.
- Once seared, place pork roast into slow cooker or instapot.
- Top with onion, jalapenos, green chilies, garlic salt, pepper, and cumin powder. Rub on pork.
- Pour in orange juice and lime juice.
- Cook on low for 8 hours or on high for approximately 5 hours.
- Once pork is perfectly cooked, use two forks to shred into bite size pieces. Taste and salt and pepper to taste.
- To assemble tacos: place pork carnitas in corn tortillas and top with queso fresco cheese, guacamole, and cilantro. Optional: tomatillo salsa
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Happy Eating, my friends! xo
This was a smash with my family. I made the recipe with two tweaks – I used premade green chili salsa from Costco and I skipped the cilantro because we aren’t big fans. What I would do next time, add more salsa, more onion, and maybe even some charred corn. I recommend opening up the slow cooker 1 hour before being done to shred the meat and allow it to sit in those juices and get more flavor.
I make these all the time so delicious my husband is always asking for these I l9ve leftovers
Outstanding! We used left over smoked pork loin and boston butt and to make Carnitas . the only changes were due to the inavailability of Cilantro. This is a “have to make regularly” dish
This was so seriously good, so much flavor and so easy to make. I can’t wait to have leftovers for lunch tomorrow! Thanks for sharing!
Delicious! Made in my InstaPot— cooked for 70 min and released the pressure manually after 20 min.
I made these this weekend for my birthday. I know, why am I the one cooking? Ahahah, but after 4 hours on the stove, they were the most flavorful and tender pieces of pork I’ve ever had. Everyone loved it. HUGE hit!
I made these last night and they were wonderful. I doubled the recipe as I have 12 kids. It was a huge hit! Thank you!