yes Nit it is, but would you rather say shoulder or butt?

Well as the poet Sir Mix-a-Lot would say...

What’s the smallest size pork butt/shoulder you can find commonly? Because I have to eat it all on my own and I don’t want it to go bad during that process.

Just two of us in my house and I have a hard time finding small enough portions of Boston Butt pre-cut. I find the smallest they routinely have at my local grocer are ~3 lbs. If they have bigger ones you can always ask to just get a smaller piece off of one, they might oblige.

This one was 9 lbs for $15.

I've eaten a ton the last day and a half. I want to make carnitas next time.

yeah it's pretty common to see ~3lb butts at the grocer and you will lose some of that weight in liquid/fat as it cooks (i cook in instapot and skim a lot of the fat before shredding). shouldn't have a problem keeping for a week in the fridge.

Big, easy enough to make pork tacos with what you cooked without having all of the 'traditional' carnitas seasonings.

Pork tacos sounds LOVELY!

i somewhat misread the KJS post first time around (i.e. glossed right over the first sentence). there are also two of us in our house, and we frequently cook for leftovers, especially flexible ones...boston butt is a perfect leftover.
my estimation is a 3lb butt raw will yield 2.5lbs max after cook depending on how much liquid/fat you want to keep and mix in with the meat. we typically average about a 1/2 pound of meat between us per home cooked meal (a pound of ground will yield two burgers each two times, etc). if you were conservative at a 1/4 pound of pork per meal for a week, that's 10 meals in 7 days with a 2.5 lb yield. bump it to a 1/3 pound per meal and that's one delicious meal of succulent pork every day for a week, bonus is you get to choose if it's for breakfast, lunch, or dinner (or all three if you're feeling piggy).

Just portion out your leftover pulled pork into 1 or 2 portion bags and freeze them. It works so well because it defrosts/cooks so quickly in the microwave, only takes about 90secs to get piping hot. I always keep some in the freezer so I can bang out a sandwich/tacos/nachos/whatever in a few minutes tops.

Count me as a weird douche but every couple of months I do a standard slow cooker pork shoulder and do one of the Kenji crispy ones - expecting both to be amazing and totally worth the time cause pork is cheaper than water here.

Then I make them, have a bunch of it (usually in soft taco form) and am super underwhelmed. 99% of the awesomeness is eating the crispy Kenji skin and the actual meat - seasoned and sauced differently every time - is just meh. I feel I need to buy a smoker...

I appreciate the answers gang, been meaning to do an IP carnitas at some point.

grando - how do you reheat the leftovers? do you use a pan to get some bacon-like crisp/char? i've had pretty good success with reheating pork like ribs or shredded shoulder in a simple veg steamer basket over a pot of boiling water and finishing in a pan to crisp the edges. the steam keeps in the moisture and doesn't have the same weird effect chef mic seems to have when reheating pork.
if you think your pork is turning out bland, one option is to cut it into pieces during the cook to create more surface area for the spices/seasoning/citrus to contact instead of keeping it as one large chunk of meat. this will likely decrease the required cook time but if the temp is low enough it may not matter.

Yeah the cutting up pieces thing seems like a good idea. Same with the crisping up in the pan.

After shredding and removing the fat, cut up a couple slices of bacon into tiny pieces, cook halfway then fry the carnitas in the grease with the bacon until crispy on the outside

That sounds amazing, might have to try on a diet break.

I will most likely be doing that this week.


Bubba did have a fiiiiiine idea.

Saw Big's post, thought daaaaaaaaamn!, knew what I had to do.

Pig + root beer +apple cider vinegar + instant pot


Back in the pot with 1/2 cup cooking liquid and some Sweet Baby Rays


Wife made a creamy dill slaw


She made a fake girly sandwich


I used a Hawaiian bread. Like a man




Bonus breakfast shot:

Nice pork!

Really don't think I'd want red cheetos on my bagel sandwich.

Wow CS. Just lots of interesting tasty stuff.

Oh wow I need details on this flaming Cheetos bacon and cream cheese on a jalepeno cheddar bagel. Thinking I can do similar with my next batch of jalepeno cheddar biscuits.

Is it just regular bacon? Do they just throw some Cheetos on the bagel or they maybe crunched up and mixed with the cream cheese? So many unanswered questions.

Maybe replace Cheetos with flaming Funyuns.

Couldn’t find flaming hot Funyuns but did do this with Cheetos. Interesting, would likely do again.

All right! I'd stuff that the up the ass and see how it fits!

confused, yet intrigued

I'd hit it