What is the greatest burrito ingredient? [Think Tank]

Carnitas (Basically like the Barbacoa except it’s pork and trust me it’s better)—Stokes

The greatest recipe in the world has three ingredients, which I will share with you now.
1) Pig.
2) Salt.
3) Time.

The third one is, perhaps, the most important.  There are cuts of pork that you can cook quickly.  Chops, loins and the like.  But these are all lazy, flavorless muscles, weak and coddled, responsible for things like maintaining the pig’s posture.  I ask you, does this guy look like he spends a lot of energy on posture?

No he does not.

Then there are the go-out-and-get-stuff-done muscles.  These take time, no matter what else you do. But no matter what else you do, it will be time well spent.

Oh, for a Bavarian hog shank, robed in a sheet of crackling rind, roasted for hours on a spit!  Oh, for a pulled pork butt, baked all afternoon in a smokey North Carolina barbecue pit, until each — individual — fiber — falls melting off the bone!  Chinese “red cooking,” Filipino adobo… it’s all the same thing.  And lest we forget, bacon, which seems to fry up so quickly, spends hours or months in a brine or a smoker before you ever get your grubby little hands on it.  Pig + salt + time.  The regional variations are just icing on the, uh, the meaty, porcine, cake.

But hey, icing is pretty delicious too.  And Carnitas, Mexican cuisine’s particular version of the porky golden ratio, deserves special recognition.

Carnitas. The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth — Car. Ni. Tas.  My sin, my soul!  The procedure is similar to American barbecue:  take a hog butt, salt it, and cook it until it loses structural integrity.  The mexican version loses the smoke, and thus, one would imagine, a lot of flavor, but it makes up for it through the judicious application of LARD.  The meat is cubed, seasoned with cumin, pepper, and salt, and then baked in a pig-fat bath. Think slow roasting brings out the flavor?  How about you reserve judgement until you’ve tried slow-deep-fat-frying, because that is really what the process entails.  The result, carnitas, may just be the least healthy, most tasty, substance on the planet.

Now some might claim that I have basically hijacked the Think Tank here.  “Okay, carnitas is delicious, fine. You’ve made your point. Is it really the single most important ingredient in a burrito?”

Well pilgrim, if you put it in a burrito, then yes.  Yes it is.