Smoked Pork Carnitas – Authentic Carnitas on the Smoker!

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These smoked pork carnitas are crispy on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside. If you’re looking for an awesome smoked carnitas recipe that combines the smoker or grill with all of the flavors of Mexican pork, this is it!

As much as I love my favorite local Mexican restaurant, the flavor that you get from certain homemade authentic Mexican recipes is way better. And making your own pork carnitas at home – taking the time to braise the cut pork butt in lard, and then crisping it up on the griddle for carnitas tacos – is just something that you don’t get in most restaurants.

I tried to make this pork carnitas recipe as authentic as possible, right down to braising the cuts of pork shoulder in lard and Mexican Coca Cola… but then I added in the element of smoke to take this smoked carnitas recipe to a whole new level of flavor!

And then you combine the smokiness of the carnitas with the brightness of this griddle grilled tomatillo salsa for the ultimate pork carnitas tacos… what could be better?!

Here’s how to make pork carnitas on the smoker… a truly unique way to cook a smoked pork butt!

What is Authentic Pork Carnitas?

Pork carnitas is a dish originating in Mexico that consists of cubes of a fattier cut of pork (like pork butt) cooked low and slow in fat or other liquid. Authentic pork carnitas are actually cooked in lard with orange juice and Mexican spices, so they stay incredibly juicy and tender. The addition of sugary Coca Cola towards the end of the cooking process adds a nice caramelization and a deep, rich color.

Think of pork carnitas as a Mexican-style pork confit. Confit in cooking terms refers to the process of cooking foods “in grease, oil, or sugar water, at a lower temperature, as opposed to deep frying”. If you’ve ever had duck confit, you’re already familiar with this cooking method.

Ingredients for Pork Carnitas

Pork Butt

Traditionally, carnitas are made with pork butt, often called “Boston butt”. You can also use pork shoulder, which comes from the bottom shoulder, but it has less fat so it may not be as tender.

The pork butt that I used was about 5.75 pounds, and it was bone-in. The size of the butt doesn’t really matter much, but if you go with a larger piece of pork (like in the 8-10 pound range), I would double the amount of oranges, onion, and garlic in the braising liquid.

You will also need salt and pepper to season it before adding it to the roasting pan.

Braising Liquid

For the braising liquid, we used:

• Manteca (Lard) – Cooking the pork in lard is the authentic way to do it. It seems like a lot of fat, but the pork gets drained from the liquid after it’s done cooking, and the fat helps to crisp up the exterior of the pork. We used the Morrell Snow Cap Manteca, but if you can find fresh pork lard at your local butcher, definitely go with that.
• Fresh oranges
• Mexican Coca Cola – If you can’t find Mexican coke, you can go with regular, but skip the diet soda varieties. You want the sugar in there to help caramelize the meat.
• Onion
• Garlic
• Jalapeños
• Bay leaves

What is Lard?

Lard is a “semi-solid white fat product obtained by rendering the fatty tissue of a pig.” If you’ve ever used tallow for cooking, then you are already know that animal fat can impart major flavor and a crispy fried texture. What tallow is to beef, lard is to pork.

How to Make Smoked Carnitas

Making my version of smoked carnitas is a multi-step process, but it’s worth the effort. I combined both the Weber griddle and the Weber kettle charcoal grill for this epic outdoor cooking recipe!

Here’s how to go from a whole pork butt to smoked pork carnitas that are crispy on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside:

Getting the Smoker or Grill Ready

To start, get your smoker, charcoal grill, or pellet grill dialed in to about 250 degrees F. Add in your choice of wood chips or pellets. I used hickory wood chips, because that’s what I already had on hand, but pretty much any type of wood should work.

I made these pork carnitas on the Weber kettle, which is a grill that I’ve used to make hundreds of different smoker recipes. If you’re not familiar with the set-up process, then I’ve got a full tutorial for how to use your charcoal grill as a smoker here, including my simple hack to get that perfect smoking temperature every time (it involves a Sharpie marker!).

Choosing the Right Pan to Make Smoked Carnitas

I struggled with what type of pan to use for this smoked pork carnitas recipe.

I didn’t want to use a disposable aluminum pan, because they’re usually a bit flimsier, and I knew that to braise the pork properly, there would be a lot of liquid in the pan. And as a former restaurant chef, I’ve seen too many accidents happen in the kitchen related to large volumes of ingredients in disposable pans.

Cast iron works great on the smoker, but I didn’t have a cast iron skillet that was deep enough to submerge the pork pieces in the lard while they cooked.

I settled on my All Clad stainless steel lasagna pan. But since this pan has a hefty price tag, I definitely didn’t want to ruin it by putting it on the smoky, sooty grill grates. To get around that, I wrapped the bottom and sides of the pan in aluminum foil. I’ve done this many times to protect different cookware pieces that I put on the smoker, and it works great!

Look for a pan that is at least 2.5 inches deep. The pan length needed will depend on the size of your pork butt. Just to give you an idea, my pan measured 12″ x 14″ x 2.5″ and it fit a 5.75 pound pork butt and the braising liquid perfectly.

Prepping the Pork Butt

While the smoker is heating up, prep the pork butt for carnitas, which translates to “little meats” in English. So the first step is to make your large pork butt, well, “little”.

Just cut the pork butt into chunks that are about 3-4 inches across. It doesn’t have to be exact. And be sure to leave the fat on the butt, because fat is flavor! If your butt has a bone in it, just cut your chunks of meat around the bone as best as you can, and go ahead and keep the bone in.

Then, sprinkle each piece of pork butt with salt and pepper. Your meat should look something like this:

The next step is definitely not authentic, but neither is smoking the carnitas, so bear with me.

While you’re cutting the pork, preheat your griddle or a large cast iron skillet until it reaches about 450 degrees F. On my Weber griddle, that’s about the medium-high setting on the knobs.

My idea with these pork carnitas on the smoker was to sear off the individual pieces of pork first to help get the nice crust. Kind of like the idea of browning your chuck roast before you add it to the slow cooker when making pot roast. The large cooking surface and high-heat capabilities of the griddle are perfect for this!

When the griddle or skillet is hot, add a bit of oil to help with the browning process. Then, lay your pieces of pork butt on the griddle, pressing each one down a bit to ensure a good even contact with the flat top grill surface.

Allow the pork to sear on the first side for about 5-7 minutes, or until a nice golden brown color develops. Then, flip the pieces to the second side and continue to cook for another 5 or so minutes. Here’s the color that you’re looking for:

All you’re looking for is a good bit of color and char. Remember, the pork is going to braise and smoke for a long time, so you definitely don’t want to try cooking it all the way through at this point.

After about 10-12 minutes on the griddle, you’re ready to transfer the pork to the smoker.

Prepping the Braising Liquid

While the pork is searing on the griddle, prep the ingredients for braising the pork butt.

Quarter the oranges (keeping the skins intact), peel and quarter the onion, halve the jalapeños, and peel and rough chop the garlic cloves.

Then, add all of those ingredients to the pan (squeezing the juice from the orange slices and then adding the skins to the pan) with the lard in its solid state… This is also not authentic, but I thought that adding the whole block of lard with the other ingredients would help to infuse more flavor as the fat warms on the smoker. Hold off on adding the Coca Cola until later in the smoking process.

Set the pan to the side… it will go on the smoker about one hour after the pork goes on.

Smoking the Pork Carnitas

After the pork is seared, transfer the large pieces to the smoker. Since I was using a kettle charcoal grill, I placed the pork as far away from the fire as I could like this:

Close the lid and smoke the pork for about one hour at 250 degrees F.

Then, add the pan with the lard, oranges, and other ingredients to the smoker like this:

Close the lid and smoke the individual pork pieces and the pan with the lard for an additional hour at 250 degrees F.

Then, open the lid again and you’ll notice that the lard has liquified and your braising liquid is probably just barely starting to boil. Add the smoked pork to the braising liquid, making sure that each piece is settled down in the pan nicely.

At this point, your smoked carnitas should look something like this:

Close the grill lid, and adjust the temperature up to about 300-325 degrees F. Continue to smoke for about another hour.

*NOTE – If you want to continue smoking at 250 degrees F, that is fine also… it may just take about 30 minutes to 1 hour longer for the pork to be done.

Then, when the pork only has about 45 minutes of smoking time left, it’s time to add the Coke.

Open the lid back up. At this point, you can flip the pork pieces over and adjust them in the pan as needed, so that they are evenly coated in the lard and crisping up nicely. Then, pour in about 3/4 of a 500 mL bottle of Mexican Coca Cola.

Close the lid and smoke the carnitas for another 45 minutes or so, and this is what your smoked pork carnitas should look like when they’re done cooking:

Carefully remove the pan from the smoker (it’s heavy!), and allow the pork to cool down for about 10 minutes. Then, remove the pork pieces from the braising liquid. You may want to use a large wire skimmer (we called this a “spider” in the restaurant business) to remove the pieces of pork from the hot lard. This helps to drain the pork a bit as well before transferring it to a serving dish.

And here’s the smoked pork carnitas:

These smoked carnitas are just as tasty as they are beautiful!

Serving Smoked Carnitas

So once your smoked carnitas is done, how do you serve it up?

Well, truth be told, we couldn’t stop eating it right out of the pan. The exterior is nice and crispy and the inside is tender and juicy, and you’ll probably have to stop yourself from devouring half of a pork butt in one sitting (or standing at the counter!).

But with what’s left, I would recommend making these awesome pork carnitas tacos!

Start by shredding the meat a bit, just like you would for regular pulled pork. Then, pile up the pulled pork carnitas on the griddle with a small bit of cooking oil like this:

Griddle the piles of pork so they get slightly crispy, and then add them to warm corn tortillas with some diced raw onion, cilantro, and this griddle grilled tomatillo salsa!

Pure pork taco perfection!

You could also make some awesome pork quesadillas, serve the carnitas over a bed of cilantro rice, or add it to a griddle stuffed burrito!

Smoked Pork Carnitas Recipe