Fast Pork Carnitas Nacho Salad

The week has flown by and now here we are again – Fast N Fun Fridays! For this recipe I got creative with 2 cups of leftover Pulled Pork. It was a snap to turn it into delicious Mexican spiced Pork Carnitas to top my Nacho Salad.

I don’t have any fun stories to tell about this dish, it’s just fast and super easy to throw together on a Friday night when you just want to kick off the weekend with a tasty meal.

Tim and I usually do big meals on the weekends, man food on Mondays, whip up something sweet to last the week on Tuesdays, ignore Wednesdays (leftovers from the weekend – YAY!), make something from the 1940’s – 1970’s on Thursday and then chill with something fast on Fridays. In between I make my own breads and rolls and in the winter you can find me stirring huge pots of warm milk to make all sorts of cheeses. Yeah I know, we’re not the most exciting culinary folk around, but hey, we’re old so that counts for something like cooking wisdom, right?

So here’s a fantastic option for leftover bits of pork, be it chops, a roast or, my personal favorite – Pulled Pork. If you haven’t got any leftover Pulled Pork handy, you can use leftover cooked beef to make Beef Carnitas, and leftover cooked chicken is tasty too! But for me, it’s the pork that makes this Fast Pork Carnitas Nacho Salad so special. It’s tender juicy meat lightly scented with orange, cumin and garlic. What’s not to love?

The first thing to do is to rustle up about 2 cups of cooked pork. Whenever I make a roast, I toss 2 cups of the cubed cooked roast into an air tight plastic container and then toss it into the freezer just for last minute meals like this. Got your leftover pork? Yes? Then on we go!

Squeeze the juice of half a large orange over the pork, then slice the peel into 2 or 3 large pieces and push it down into the pork. Pop it into the fridge to sit all day.

When you’re ready to cook, assemble your ingredients – sorta like this. Be creative and use the Mexican flavors you like best for your Carnitas Nacho Salad.

The first thing to do is to get a large cast iron or non-stick skillet piping hot. Add 2 tbsp. of oil to coat the bottom, then toss in the pork – minus the orange peels of course. Let it sit and sizzle in the pan for a minute or two while you assemble the base of the salad. For this meal I used a can of well drained black beans, some bagged salad mix and plenty of pickled jalapeno’s.

Top all of that with a hefty layer of grated cheeses like Monterey Jack and Sharp Cheddar. Then go stir up your Pork Carnitas. By now the bottom of it should be dark brown and crispy. The only thing left to do is to add about 1 tsp. of powdered garlic and 2 tsp. of cumin, plus a pinch of salt to the pan. Stir well and remove from the heat.

Pile the pork in a big mound on top of the cheese layer, then add some avocado, salsa, sour cream and whatever else you found in your fridge that looks tasty!

And that’s it – Fast Pork Carnitas Nacho Salad in about 20 minutes. Quick, tasty, and you’ve got lots of free time to go watch a movie and snuggle with your favorite movie person.

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