shredded pork tacos with avocado, quick pickled onions and queso fresco

A good taco doesn’t need more than three or four ingredients to knock your socks off. Start with tender, flavorful meat, add a few well-chosen toppings and maybe a cold beer and you’re done. Cielo.

Earlier this week we talked about the pork on sale at Costco. {We also gave away $50 in Costco Cash…congrats Jessie C!} I may have mentioned that I bought a gorgeous pork roast for not much more than the cost of a burger in a diner. And so…I made pork tacos.

The first step was braising the meat. There aren’t many steps to braising but you do need a good 3-4 hours to let the meat get fall-apart tender. Put a large dutch oven over a high heat, add some oil and, once it starts smoking, put in the meat, then leave it alone. You want it to get nice and browned – this is what adds flavor to the roast and will make your tacos very, very tasty.

Toss in some onions, garlic & a couple of seasonings, add some beer, chicken stock & chipotle peppers and put the whole thing in the oven. Let it do it’s thing for 3 hours or so…and when you pull it out of the oven you’ll have the most tender pork you’ve ever had. And it’ll taste like you just landed in Mexico. And your house will smell like it, too!

I love cooking with PORK. It’s the other white meat, after all {wasn’t that the most clever marketing campaign ever?}. But seriously, it’s good for you and so versatile. I love cooking a crown roast for the holidays – so gorgeous!

But it’s not the holidays yet – thank goodness. {Man, they’ll be here before we know it!} So for now, I leave you with these yummy pork tacos. Crown roast post coming in approximately 10 weeks 🙂

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Shredded Pork Tacos with Avocado, Quick Pickled Onions and Queso Fresco

Yield: 0

To pickle red onions: Mix together 1/2 cup cider vinegar, 1 T sugar and 1 t kosher salt. Pour over a thinly sliced red onion and soak at room temperature for at least one hour. Recipe adapted from Michael Symon.

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Ingredients

• 4 lb. pork roast
• 3 T olive oil
• kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper
• 1 onion sliced
• 3 garlic cloves, whole
• 1 t ground cumin
• 1/2 t ground coriander
• 2 whole chipotle peppers in adobo
• 1 bottle light mexican beer
• 4-6 cups chicken stock
• corn tortillas
• pickled red onions
• cilantro
• queso fresco, crumbled
• avocado slices
• lime wedges

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 300F.
2. Season the pork generously on all sides with salt and pepper.
3. In a large dutch oven over high heat, heat oil until smoking and sear the pork on all sides. Remove from pan, reduce heat to medium and add the onions, garlic, coriander, cumin and a pinch of salt and cook until the onions have softened, about 3 minutes.
4. Deglaze the pan by pouring in the beer, add the chipotle peppers, place the butt back into the dutch oven, and then bring it to boil.
5. Add the chicken stock to pan to come 1/2 - 3/4 the way up the pork.
6. Bring the stock to a boil, then cover with lid and place into hot oven.
7. Braise the pork for about 3 1/2 hours, or until fork tender.
8. Using two forks, shred the meat.
9. Warm the tortillas and arrange accompaniments in bowls. Build tacos as desired. Serve with lime wedges.

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Kristy Bernardo

Kristy Bernardo is the recipe creator behind The Wicked Noodle. She's a five-time cookbook author, has taught cooking classes to both kids and adults, and has been creating recipes for nationwide brands since 2009. She learned most of her cooking skills from her mom and grandmother, then honed those skills at boot camp at the Culinary Institute of America.

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