Easy Low-Fat Crispy Slow Cooker Carnitas

Easiest Slow Cooker Crispy Carnitas- So macro-friendly. Super low fat, high protein, and good in everything! www.lillieeatsandtells.com

5 from 15 votes

Easy Low-Fat Crispy Slow Cooker Carnitas

One of my favorite proteins to have in my fridge at all times! So easy, so lean and super tasty. My whole family is obsessed.

Prep Time15

Cook Time54

Total Time54

Course: Protein

Cuisine: Mexican

Keyword: carnitas, mexican, pork

Servings: -12

Calories: 141kcal

Author: Lillie

Ingredients

2-3 pounds pork tenderloin Only 2.5 fat for 4oz- I get mine from Costco and usually do one of the packages which is two small loins.
Season Salt
16 oz jar herdez or some green salsa
8 cloves of garlic I always use these frozen cubes from Trader Joes or Stater Brothers
1 medium white onion diced- weigh it raw and make a note before you add it I used about 250 grams- or estimate if you're into that because it's an onion.

Instructions

Trim fat off meat and pat dry.
Cut into chunks, 3-4 inches long. (This helps the pieces be shorter later like carnitas.)
Season liberally all over with season-salt and sear on all sides in a hot pan with cooking spray to lock in flavor. Get a nice brown crust on it.
Move to a crock pot and cover with the salsa, garlic, and onion and cook for 4-6 hours or until tender. Shred it and toss in juices. (I like to pull out my chunks and shred them in a new dish then pour a little more than half of the liquid over it. Toss in those juices and then proceed to fry it up.
OR for instant pot: Season meat, sear in instant pot on sautee setting, then cover with salsa mixture, seal lid and vent, press manual, and up to 45 minutes. When it's done, let it naturally release for 10-15 minutes, then open the vent , then lid when it lets you easily.
***You can use the meat like this, or spread it on a pan and bake at 350 for about 15 minutes to get some crispy pieces, more like authentic carnitas. OR... my favorite way (AND THE ONLY WAY WE DO IT NOW... AND FOR SURE WITH ANY LEFTOVERS) is just crisp up as much as you need in a hot fry pan. Quicker than the oven and SOO good when it gets a good brown on it!

Notes

EDITED TO UPDATE: I now have most recipes entered in My Fitness Pal so you can just search "Lillie Eats and Tells Crispy Carnitas" (Or the longer entire name but this should get you there.) From there you can log as many grams as you take out of the crock or instant pot. If you crisp it up, it will shrink a little more so estimate that in or keep your portion separate if you want to be precise.

Copied from the blog in case you skip that part:

Macro-Tips on weighing this: (Skip this if you're already a recipe logging pro or if you're just here for the food and not the macros or you'll never want to come back!)

I don't want to overcomplicate this, but if you track macros and appreciate things being precise, you'll want to account for that shrinkage that happens in the second cook. So if you crisp up the entire recipe, you can use the FINAL crispy carnitas weight as your end number... the one you use for your number of servings if you use this method to add your recipes. BUT, if you're going to use it for different things and not always serve it crispy, I'll use the final juicy weight in the "number of servings" in my recipe and then when I go to crisp up a pan for dinner, I'd weigh a portion into the pan (600 grams for instance) and then weigh it again after it's crispy and see by what percentage it shrunk. If I'm lazy I'll just log a little more than I take to account for it. So don't stress. (Cooking it takes away some water leaving all the macros but less weight so 120 grams of pork is now maybe 100g but you're still getting the macros from 120 grams of juicy pork so if you're recipe reflects the macros of the juicy pork, you'll want to log that full 120 grams of it.)

Nutrition