I had some terrific tacos at a Mexican Grill restaurant recently. One of them contained shredded/pulled pork and it was fabulous. While I can't precisely identify all of the ingredients they used in preparing that pork I am providing a recipe for making it that turns out to be just fine. You can experiment with various fresh ingredients and sauces later to make the taco of your choice if that idea appeals to you. Lots of people love shredded pork tacos.

Actually, I just made some fabulous shredded pork tacos using 8" diameter soft flour taco shells, the pork, thin slices of Monterrey Pepper Jack cheese, halved green pimento stuffed manzanilla olives, diced onion, diced tomato, Sriracha pepper sauce and chopped lettuce. They beat the normal seasoned browned ground beef tacos to pieces! All I did was warm the taco shell with the shredded pork on it on a paper plate in the microwave oven and then build the taco with the other ingredients. Yummy! I quickly made and consumed a second one!

Note that the shredded pork and broth from this recipe can be used in many different dishes as the meat component. Note also that you can easily scale up this recipe to use an entire eight or nine pound pork shoulder without significantly increasing the other ingredients. Simply use a little more chicken broth or water. You may also want to cut the whole pork shoulder into two pieces prior to cooking for later easy handling at shredding time.

Ingredients:

1, 4 to 5 lb pork butt (otherwise known as pork shoulder)

2, 32 oz. cartons of chicken broth

2, 15 ounce cans of diced tomatoes or equivalent diced fresh tomatoes

20 whole garlic cloves, chopped

4 whole fresh jalapeno peppers, sliced (do not remove the seeds) or four chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

1, 4 ounce can of diced green chiles or green chile sauce

2 teaspoons of oregano (dry leaf, or, two Tbsp. of fresh oregano, pressed tightly into the measuring spoon)

1 tsp. of sea salt

Directions:

Combine all the ingredients in a two gallon pot and simmer, covered, until fork tender. This can take from 3 to 4 hours. If the meat is not fully covered with liquid I recommend turning the meat over to expose the submerged part once every 30 minutes.

When the pork is tender (it falls apart if you stick a fork in it), remove the pot from the heat and remove the pork to a wood cutting board.

Shred (or "pull") the pork with two forks, discarding all fat, cartilage and bone. This turns out to be very easy. If not, then the pork was not cooked long enough.

Discard the melted, liquified fat on the surface of the broth by skimming it with a ladle.

If you are planning to eat all of the pork right away you can skip this step. Okay, let's suppose you are making this food well in advance of needing it at a meal. Return the shredded pork to the pot, cover it, and return the contents to a boil. Let it boil gently for about five minutes, then turn off the heat and let the contents cool to room temperature, covered. Then put the covered pot in a cold place, like a refrigerator, for four to eight hours. The purpose for chilling the mixture is to get all or almost all of the remaining fat to aggregate into clumps on the surface of the broth. Thus, you can skim off the fat and discard it, keeping only the meat, vegetables and broth. At that point you can vacuum seal and refrigerate or freeze the mixture in as many vacuum seal bags as are appropriate for the amount of meat and broth you want to use at a meal. You can now skip the remaining steps shown below.

Place the shredded pork in a storage container and add a pint or more of the broth and vegetables to keep it moist. Save some or all of the remaining broth in a separate container, because you may want to add some of it to foods like red beans and rice and chipotle pepper at serving time.

Refrigerate the shredded pork and the extra container of broth until they are needed.

Reheat the amount of pork needed either in a microwave oven or in a saucepan, using a little of the broth to keep it moist.

The pork can be used very nicely in tacos or as an ingredient in other Mexican dishes.

Enjoy!