Please help me with my pork chili verde

Hey folks. As of late I've been constantly making salsa verde and occasionally pork chili verde, but the latter never comes out.

My salsa is solid. While the amount for the pork is scaled up, for making salsa alone I use about a pound of tomatillos (preferably the large ones to add extra water), half an onion, 2 or more cloves of garlic, half to a full bundle of cilantro (minus as much of the stems as I could remove without taking too much time), 1 lime, 3 jalapenos, 2 serranos, 2 pinches of salt, and 1 and a half spoonfuls of vegetable oil.

I fucking suck at incorporating it into my pork shoulder, though. I use the butt, around 4 or 5 pounds with a scaled up amount of salsa (usually 1.5 to 2 times as much).

First time I made it, I fucked up by trying to brown too small of pieces and also made the idiotic move to trim it hard beforehand, so it was tough and not as flavorful as it could have been. Plus, the pork was just that, pork. None of the verde had gotten into it.

Second time I just threw the whole butt into the slow cooker, but made the mistake of putting the salsa in at the start. The butt cooked actually pretty nice, but I accidentally boiled away and ruined the salsa with all the extra pork juice, leaving this flavorless green liquid with tomatillo particles instead. VERY flavorless.

I want to get your feedback and advice before doing this again, because I usually don't buy that much meat at once and hate fucking up the whole batch, so a few questions.
1. I'm thinking about cooking the pork shoulder alone and then mixing in the salsa at the end; are their any particular seasonings beyond salt and maybe pepper that I should use to rub on the pork, and at what point exactly should I mix the salsa in? With a little bit of cooking to go so it can mingle with the pork fat, or when its taken out of the crockpot and already shredded? I figure that letting it sit together overnight might help.
pic related, one of my batches (question about it in next post)

2. In the picture, I have my "roasted" batch. In my first few batches, I exclusively broiled my vegetables and just let them blister, but the salsa kept turning out too sour because the tomatillos weren't being cooked enough. So I decided to just let them sit in a hot oven instead, which fixed the sour issue but left me without the blistering.

So my question is: Can I have them in the oven for a bit, and then at the end turn on the broiler to burn the fuckers? Or, would the cooking make them too soft and structurally weakened to handle being burned properly? Is that even possible?

I think you should be adding way more cilantro to your salsa.

If you already know you can cook the meat to the tenderness you are going for, try the same thing and just cook it with salt peper, garlic and some ground dried chilis. then add the salsa towards the end.

More cilantro I can do, how many more bundles? I'll keep that seasoning in mind too, but what sort of chilis are you talking about?

Also, pic related was my first fuck up, where I cut it up small and tried to brown the pieces (where I accidentally made them tough as hell). IIRC this wasn't near the end or anything. The salsa didn't nearly reduce as much in thickness or flavor (although this was back when I wasn't blending it enough), so I assume that was an issue with the fat I left on in the second batch. I shouldn't be removing the tomatillo seeds, right? I see how I could do it by pulverizing them separately and then pushing it through a mesh or screen or something, but I don't know if it would really make any sort of difference beyond the aesthetic. It certainly doesn't hurt the texture by leaving them in.

Also, in addition, do you guys recommend any other chili peppers to put in? I've seen some stuff for poblanos, but that doesn't seem very flavorful. Another suggested hatch chilies but I've never tried those.

Pro salsa mexican here

Look, want to get the best of the salsa, boil the tomatillos, with the jalapeƱos and serranos, also put a full onion cut in half, just boil them till the tomatillos open themselves.
Garlic is fine, I dont really think cilantro is needed on the sauce, but if you want is a plus.
Lime doesnt always work with cooked sauces, almost never, so try removing the lemon. But yeah, cook everything togheter, oh and no oil.

Then start cooking the pork, and when its like half done, add the salsa. let it boil, fire on low.

There is a fucking lot of difference putting it in the end and on mid-cooking. try to cut the pork in small cubes

But yeah, in my suggestion, cilantro is a no no foo foo

Thank you. How much water for the boil? Enough to cover them, or do I want to try and leave a little room on top?

On your lime comment, I know you just accidentally wrote lemon instead, but do you at all recommend I try replacing the lime with a lemon? When I asked a friend about this, he told me his family uses lemons because they're stronger and that they just don't get much out of limes.

Finally, how big would you say I should make the cubes? I know I shouldn't make them as small as but I didn't know if I should just segment the butt into a few pieces or legitimately cut it up.

More than enough to cover them, and when its well boiled, you can use a little of that water to blend it up. Oh also, really important, if you have a chicken stock cube, you can add it when you are going to blend it, gives good flavor

Oh yeah, it was lime, my bad. But I say you should try it without lime or lemon, or if you want to use it, I would say lemon, gives a more intense flavor and not so sweet.

They are fine as they were in the photo

Sorry for late reply, op

Leave the stems on your cilantro. Cilantro stems have tons of flavour. They don't always look nice for presentation, but if you're blending it it's cool.

Beyond that, I've never made pork chili verde. I guess I might try braising the pork ass in a basic mirepoix and some wine and stock of choice (I've been using whey instead of stock, lately), then shredding and incorporating in a hot pan of verde. I've also heard of people baking the pork after braising when making carnitas, so maybe look into that.

bump for a new day.

I'm not a fan of cilantro stems. In my experience, they always leave fibers in the salsa that aren't too bad, but nevertheless leave little stringy pieces here or there. Maybe I just needed to pulverize them a fuck-ton more. I'll keep it in mind.

Also technically the butt is the shoulder, but interesting braise idea, I'll keep that in mind too.

I've recently seen a few recipes calling for the use of orange juice in slowcooking the pork shoulder, specifically squeezing the juice out from two halves and then throwing the squeezed oranges in too. Has anyone done anything like this, or has any idea how it'd affect the flavor? These fucks seem to love it.

I did it with OJ, Orange Oil and Milk for Carnitas. It was heavenly. I would not add The oranges but rather a little orange Peel if You lack The oil, since The peel has essential oils. Adding The entire orange for cooking would make it bitter.

Neat. What kind of ratio do you recommend with the juice:oil:meat?

Also, while I get that it's delicious, can it compliment other flavors, say, if I were to use this for chili verde? Maybe not with the milk, but with the citrus?

>salsa
Easy mode: go to Mexican grocer and by canned salsa verde and doctor it up to your taste. Or you can just keep pissing about with what your doing. In any event, poblano and jalapeƱos are essential.
>pork
Braise it. Shred it.

Final assembly: put shredded pork in a pan, blend salsa verde with some chicken broth or stock (or pork stock if you can be assed to make it) add and simmer. Garnish with lime and cilantro, queso fresco. This is country food m8, not haute cuisine.

I like to call it ass because I'm a crude boy. You know why they call it boston butt? Because Bostonians are shit heads.

I mince my cilantro before blending it, to break up all those long stringy fibers.

I'll make sure to mince it fine, in that case.

Bump for new ideas.

>This is country food m8, not haute cuisine.

Country food that almost nobody can get right, in my experience (including myself). There's one place that has unbelievable pork salsa verde burritos, this little mexican place called Isaac's in Wilmington, California. I'd love to somehow, someway capture that taste.

Everyone else has pretty shit variants, though. They always go with the super watery pork verde which is just disappointing.

>They always go with the super watery pork verde which is just disappointing.
Edit: Or just no sauce at all, which is just disappointing.

Go away Mark Schlareth, you're rich already.

Not until I get this recipe down, Fucker.

>chicken stock
>chicken broth

Surely there has to be a better way of incorporating flavor

There isn't, and don't call me Shirley.