Slow Cooker Carnitas with Avocado Salad (Easy)

This really is a delicious pork dinner!  Pork meals can be hit or miss for me sometimes.  I like pork but I can't say I love pork.  This meal changes the game!  It is a simple meal to prepare because you basically are mixing up your spices and rubbing them all over the pork and placing it in the crock pot for 8-10 hours that morning.  I would say 8 hours works just fine for this recipe, 10 seems to just be too long.  The house smells wonderful from the cooking process!  Once you have slow cooked this all day, you will place your meat in a 9x13 baking dish, shred it, and bake it in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes to crisp it up.  Do not throw away the broth it cooked in all day,  you will need that for moistening the meat as needed.  I drizzle a little bit of the broth over the meat once it comes out of the oven.  I also pour some of the broth over the leftovers and freeze it for a future meal or for the next day as leftovers.  It really comes out great that way;  that is why I say do not discard your broth. 

Now getting to the avocado salad;  I have to talk about the Avocado Salad that I served with this meal, it is out of this world delicious!  It is a must!  Do not leave it out!  You will love it!  I served the shredded pork over a warmed flour tortilla and spread some of the avocado salad on top and added a few lettuce leaves, folded it up like a wrap and chowed down!  I can eat two and call it a complete meal.  I was very satisfied.  I used plain Greek yogurt instead of sour cream for my avocado salad because it just is healthier and adds more protein.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Carnitas/Detail.aspx
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/avocado-salad-with-bacon-and-sour-cream/detail.aspx

I doubled all the spices to put on the pork and omitted the cinnamon altogether. 

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon crumbled dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 (4 pound) boneless pork shoulder roast
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 cups chicken broth

 Directions

1. Mix together salt, garlic powder, cumin, oregano, coriander, and cinnamon in a bowl. Coat pork with the spice mixture. Place the bay leaves in the bottom of a slow cooker and place the pork on top. Pour the chicken broth around the sides of the pork, being careful not to rinse off the spice mixture.
2. Cover and cook on Low until the pork shreds easily with a fork, about 10 hours. Turn the meat after it has cooked for 5 hours. When the pork is tender, remove from slow cooker, and shred with two forks. Use cooking liquid as needed to moisten the meat.

Avocado Salad with Bacon and Sour Cream

Ingredients

• 4 slices bacon, chopped (I used Oscar Mayer Real Bacon Bits instead)
• 2 avocados - peeled, pitted, and cubed
• 3 green onions, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup sour cream (I used plain Greek Yogurt, no fat and high in protein, better for you)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• salt to taste
• red leaf lettuce (even though the recipe calls for just laying the lettuce on a plate and placing the avocado salad mixture on top, I tore the leaves and put them on the shredded pork and ate them)

Directions

1. Cook the chopped bacon in a skillet over medium heat until crisp. With a slotted spoon, remove bacon to a paper towel. Drain fat.(If you use the Real Bacon Bits, you don't have to do this step)
2. In a large bowl, gently combine avocados, bacon, green onions, sour cream, lemon juice, and salt.(a food processor works wonderfully instead here)
3. Arrange salad leaves on plates, and spoon avocado salad on top. 

Boneless pork shoulder roast rubbed in spices sitting in 2 cups of chicken broth.

Shredded cooked pork baked for 20 minutes to crisp up.

Instead of buying an entire pack of bacon just to fry up 4 slices I used this instead for the avocado salad.

My mini food processor I used for making my avocado salad, comes out so smooth this way.

Avocado salad served over red leaf lettuce leaves