NYC’s Most Exciting Taqueria Uses an Entire Pig in Their Tacos

Carnitas Ramirez is a Taqueria that focus on pork.

We currently work with 15 different cuts

of pork like the ribs, pork butt, shank,

but we also specialize in the not really common parts

of the pork, like the uterus, the tongue, the snout.

The way we concentrate on only pork it just give us

the room to get into the subtleness

of working with one thing only.

Being a co-owner means a lot of different roles,

but most particularly I'm concentrating in the kitchen

and offering to people experience that it could be

as closest as we can to Mexico.

[light upbeat music]

Good morning everybody. My name is Giovanni Cervantes.

I'm one of the co-owners and one

of the taqueros here at Carnitas Ramirez.

It's 7:00 AM and we have a lot of work to do. So let's go.

[happy music]

This is our main dining room.

As you can see it's counter service.

Later on as soon as we're ready to open

we're gonna lay it out pretty much

like a full pork here with many more parts.

We knew that when we opened it was going

to be like an educational experience also

for everybody that comes into the restaurant.

There's definitely a lot of people

that were not used to all these different cuts,

but we help them out in different ways.

So we have a really nice pork map right here

in our main dining room.

So you have all the different cuts that we're doing today

and we also write down in this window all the names

also with its translation.

Our QR code is right there, that gives you just pictures

of every single taco in its best expressions.

So the first thing we do in the morning, somewhere

around 7:00 AM and we're gonna put lard in both castles.

We have these two castles here.

They're basically made to put as much meat as you can.

This is where we only sear our meat

and this is when we simmer our meat.

So this is low temperature, a long time

and this is where the actual meat gets cooked

and this is only for searing.

We have about 15 different cuts

of the pig that we're gonna work with.

The first tacos that I always suggest people to try

and is the surtida, it's literally like 15 different parts

of the pork in a single bite.

I feel like that's the carnitas experience that is max.

You just have all the flavors condensed in one taco.

We have meat schedule right here.

We write at what time we put every cut

and these are all the cuts that we're going work with today.

So we're gonna start fulling these castles with lard.

The meaning of carnitas is pork cooked on its own fat,

but depending on how you keep your lard

and what components you add to your lard,

that's gonna define the flavor of your product.

In this case your carnitas at the end.

So in a sense we're very purist because we only add salt

and some garlic into our lard.

That's our madre lard, is the same lard we've been using

since the day we opened.

The lard, it's the most important

component of our product here.

The reason we keep using the same lard

is because we believe that this is

what gonna bring all the flavor to our carnitas.

There's crazy stories

and people pass their lard through generations.

So if like your grandpa dies,

they give you their lard.

At the end of the night,

we filter this lard, put it back into the buckets

so we can clean this kitchen so everything gets ready

and fresh start every morning for us.

Depending on the day, we decide how much lard

we really need, like if we are doing a small batch,

this one was in the fridge.

This is a different quality of manteca.

It has to be really hot.

So the more we use it, the more darker it gets.

That's why this one at the end of the week, it's just time

to get a new one, replace it.

Every Wednesday that we open, we start

with a fresh lard on this castle only.

It's about 7:15 right now.

So we're gonna take you downstairs.

We're gonna start with our macisa, which is our park butt.

[light Mexican music]

Welcome to our prep kitchen.

This is the dungeon

and here with Robbie Roberto, he is peeling off

his tomatillos for the salsa verde.

This is our walk-in fridge.

These are the ribs that we're gonna use for our first batch.

This colored pork is pork butt,

in Mexico we call it [speaks Spanish].

It's basically really meaty,

rich on fat sort of cut.

Very soon we're gonna start searing these pieces. Let's go.

We're gonna check temperature.

As you can tell, it's like at 340, 345 right now.

So that means it's way ready. This is our pork butt.

That's the first one that goes precisely

because it takes the most time.

We're gonna give it a good sear,

that's gonna help us with color.

That's gonna give you some texture as well.

I like my carnitas to be just the right amount of chewing.

The searing part also helps with that.

Mostly the cuts that are the meatiest are the ones

that are definitely, we're gonna give them a good sear

and then we're gonna put it

right into the simmering castle.

Here is our meat schedule.

So we have the maciza, which is this meat.

We put it in at 7:30 and we put eight pieces.

This is sort of the control

that we have in case something goes wrong

at the end of the batch.

If we notice that something needed a little more time

to be cooked or less time to be cooked, we go back to this,

we see at what time we put it,

and then we need to make adjustments.

All of this. [speaks Spanish]

I just touch base with Saul,

make sure the searing it's on point.

We think it is, as you can tell, like from the beginning,

how much this changes.

This is all raw, so it's basically just the out layer

that it's been seared, all this heat needs to penetrate.

So that's when we're gonna put it into this castle

and this is where they're gonna be for the next four hours.

So this one's just so ready, man. So beautiful.

You can tell all the brightness,

all these golden colors are like just telling me

that it's ready to cook.

Let's go downstairs. Pick up the lengua.

[bright Mexican music]

It's 8:00 AM.

This meat is just so sturdy, they need a lot of time

to break down and they make really soft.

So that's what we're gonna do next. This is our lengua.

It takes so long to be done, but it's needed.

We're also gonna get some buche, which is our stomach.

It's super strong.

So they need a lot of time to break down

and they make really soft.

This, they don't need to get seared

so they go straight into our madre castle.

So I'm just gonna go and put the lenguas right there,

but they all have different timings.

This is the stomach and after spending here three hours

and a half, they just get really soft and really delicious.

This liquid is pretty dense

so you cannot really see through.

It's almost like fishing.

Maybe by the end of the day something gets a little hidden

and we find it and we took it out

and we thought we were running out of lenguas

and like there's no, guess what,

there was a lengua right there.

[upbeat Mexican music]

It's 8:15. We're back at our prep kitchen.

This is time I usually come and check out with Roberto

how he's doing with the salsa.

It's salsa verde cruda, which means none

of these ingredients are being cooked.

They're just raw, so we have tomatillos, onions, cilantro,

garlic, avocado chunks, blended.

So as you can see it has a lot of texture, crunchy,

juicy, acidic flavor that kind of remains

and it stays in your mouth

and it contrasts really, really nice with the carnitas.

It's pretty good. Robbie, gracias.

[Robbie speaks Spanish]

And let's go upstairs and check out our meat.

[light upbeat Mexican music]

So it's around 9:00 AM right now.

We have our next batch of different cuts

that we're gonna add into our pot.

These are ears.

These are really, really nice, crunchy,

but there's also some chewiness of the skin.

The meat part is very minimal.

It's more of a flavor and texture experience with this.

We also have our tails.

Tails can come in like different shapes.

We have our uterus here.

So this is a another

organ that takes a while to get done.

And we have the cheeks.

These are like, I would say it's really nice,

like it's a really meaty, kinda unique flavor cut.

So the reason there these guys are in this basket is

because these are the smaller cuts that we deal with

is gonna help us out to keep it all together.

So when it's ready, we just grab it

and we know it's good to go.

[rapid upbeat music]

It's 10:45 but we're still missing a few things.

All our meat's already in the castle

and it's gonna keep boiling for another hour.

What is happening right now?

Belen is making our sesadilla

which is our brain taco.

It's just such a unique flavor. It's difficult to describe.

It's velvety, that's just what means for me is pleasure.

It comes like that in a much more smaller tortilla.

We like to keep it tiny.

So it has like about a spoon of brains.

These brains have been pre-cooked already

and they have some epazote and some garlic as well.

So basically what she's doing is like enclosing

these brains into these tortillas

with the help of these toothpicks

everything like keeps together.

So [speaks Spanish], we make it once a week.

It put all our leftovers together.

That's where you can see all these different like kind

of like patterns and textures and colors.

We can see some ears here.

This more like reddish part, that's the uterus.

And all these like brownish parts are, it is just like meat

and it's just fresh and delicious.

Like in a different shape. Some sort of like sausage.

It's already cooked, but we're gonna

blend it and break it down.

So as you can tell, it's was only like a quick time

that Belen put it into the griddle.

Now that made us ready to assemble.

We call it gorditas, this similar shape.

It's also well known in Latin America as arepas.

It's a different masa, arepas are made. this is just corn.

They're called gorditas because they're chunky.

I remember gorditas de chicharron a lot growing up

in Mexico City.

That was one of my main meals, to be honest,

like when I was in school.

This is the last procedures.

One of them is our chicharron or pork rice.

This is just pork skin, but the way it's been treated

and dried out, it interacts this way

with the lard at a higher temperature

and they're super easy to make.

This usually only takes like five minutes

and they're ready to go.

So these chicharrones,

they're gonna go two different options.

We offer them as scrambled

that we basically just chop them up

and just put it as a topping on your taco.

Or you can also just get it on a side,

which just like you're seeing it right now,

we put it in a little bowl

and you can just snack it in between your taco bites.

The shapes are great, unpredictable.

They can go in any forms.

So this is like a, you know, uncooked raw one,

[teeth crunch]

crunchy, amazing fresh chicharron.

We're about 20 minutes, actually a little less

for us to get open.

So right now Saul is taking all the meat out of the castle.

We're like organizing it.

We have here our chicharron carnudo,

over there we have our nana, which is the uterus

and the skin, which is our [speaks Spanish].

What Rob is doing on the other side, we toast that layer

of the barriga, that's where the fat is

and the skin, it just adds a little more different tone

of flavor at the end.

But also I love the way it looks

after when you have that kind of like contrast

of colors in your taco, it works pretty well.

For me these are the best spots in the taqueria

because you can obviously see all the action

and you are like as close to the kitchen as you can be

and the sounds of the kitchen.

You know, when we get all the names out

or we were talking to each other, you're just part

of that experience.

We're just a few minutes before opening.

Everything is laid out here.

We're basically just making tortillas

so we have a batch in advance.

So I'm just gonna go to the kitchen,

make sure everybody is ready over there.

Thank you guys for going with me.

We open at noon, so let's go.

See you guys later. Bye bye.

[light upbeat music]