Carnitas Burrito With Salsa Verde

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Our carnitas burrito with salsa verde is juicy, tender, and drenched in a spicy verde sauce and perfect for a restaurant-style dinner at home. Just don’t forget the margaritas!

As we’ve mentioned many times before, we love Mexican food. One of our favorite restaurants, Yolanda’s Mexican Café, serves this delicious pork carnitas burrito smothered in salsa verde. It’s the juiciest and tenderest wet burrito, with a fresh, zingy green sauce. Since it’s Alex’s go-to order, we couldn’t help but recreate this dish at home – with our own unique spin, of course!

While the restaurant classic features mostly carnitas, sauce, and cheese inside the burrito, we prefer to stuff our burritos full of other ingredients. Kinda like our Chipotle orders! In addition to our delicious slow cooker carnitas, homemade salsa verde, and some Mexican cheese, we add in some refried beans, brown, rice, and fresh produce. 

What This Recipe Entails

Some of these ingredients may be hard to find at your local grocery store which is why we include recipes for both the carnitas and verde sauce. Make the carnitas ahead of time for a homemade wet burrito that makes the perfect comfort food dinner after a long week. 

• Prep time: 15 minutes
• Cook time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

• Carnitas – You likely won’t be able to find premade carnitas at the store so here are the 3 options that we usually take for this burrito: 1. Make homemade slow cooker carnitas. 2. Use plain pulled pork and sauté it with a little bit of mexican seasonings (think cayenne, cumin, paprika, onion, garlic, and mexican oregano) and citrus juices (lime, orange, and pineapple are our favorites) to make a carnitas-like mixture. Or 3. Just use plain pulled pork. This option loses a little flavor but is the easiest. 
• Tortillas – Mission has a burrito-size tortilla size that works well for this recipe. Otherwise look for 10 to 12 inch tortillas. If you’re lucky enough to have a Mexican market in your area, they will likely have some freshly made burrito-sized tortillas (they may even be bigger than the Mission ones!). If you can’t find tortillas this big and have to use a smaller size, just make sure to use less filling in each burrito so you can still fold them easily.
• Verde sauce – While it is pretty easy to find verde sauce in the store, we haven’t found one that we like enough to recommend to you. We always make our own verde sauce at this point because it’s so much better than anything from a jar. 
• Rice – We like using plain brown rice because it’s an easy whole grain. However, using Mexican rice or cilantro lime rice adds extra flavor to the burrito and can be made with white or brown rice. 
• Refried beans – Regular refried beans or black refried beans both work great with this recipe! We choose based on what we’re feeling in the moment and what we have in the pantry. You can’t go wrong with either. 
• Other fillings – We like to add some sautéd red onion and jalapeno to our burritos for a little bit of fresh produce and some shredded Mexican cheese to melt everything together. You can also add any of your other favorite burrito fillings such as pico de gallo, guac, corn, or extra hot sauce.

How To Make A Carnitas Burrito With Salsa Verde

1. Start the filling – To make the burrito filling first sauté diced onions and jalapeno until softened. Then add the carnitas and cook until lightly crisped and warmed through. 
2. Add the rice and beans – Add the rice, beans, and lime juice and stir to combine. Cook until warm. Finally add the shredded cheese and cook until melted. Remove the filling from the heat and set aside.
3. Warm the tortillas – Warm up the tortillas in the microwave. We like to place them between damp paper towels and microwave for about 10 to 15 seconds per tortilla. The extra moisture from the paper towels helps to soften the tortillas while they warm. 
4. Make the burritos! – Spoon about half of the filling into the center of each tortilla into a rough log-like shape. Next fold the tortilla in on the short sides of the log until they meet in the middle. From here you’re going to close one of the remaining sides, and then roll the burrito towards the other side. Check out our expert tips for a video of how to best wrap a burrito (or just go to Chipotle and watch them!).
5. Serve – Serve your stuffed burritos with a generous topping of hot verde sauce, some rice and beans, and a side of chips and your favorite dip. Can we recommend some mango pico de gallo?

Serving Suggestions

There are so many different things you can serve with a burrito, here are some of our favorite options:

• Just like the restaurants: Most restaurants serve wet burritos with a side of rice and refried beans. Since you’ll need these ingredients for your burrito filling anyways, plate any extra rice and beans alongside your burrito for serving! You can stir some lime juice and chopped cilantro into the rice to make an easy cilantro lime rice, and top the beans with a bit of the Mexican cheese.
• Burrito on the go: Wrap the burrito up in aluminum foil and take the verde sauce in a container to go. This way you can bring your burrito to work for lunch, or better yet, on a picnic! Don’t forget some chips for any extra verde sauce!
• Add some classic chips and dips: Salsa, guacamole, and pico de gallo are our go to Mexican sides for a reason. They’re just so classic, easy to make, and go well with everything.
• Or mix it up with some more unique dips: If you’re looking to make your burrito dinner a little more fun and unique, here are some of our favorite Mexican sides and dips to spice things up: cottage cheese queso, black bean corn salsa, crockpot Mexican street corn dip, and restaurant style Mexican bean dip.
• And the non-negotiables: We’d be terrible food bloggers if we didn’t recommend a margarita to go with your burrito. Margaritas are just how you round out any great Mexican dinner. We love how our tropical pineapple coconut margarita goes perfectly with the carnitas and verde sauce in this burrito. 

Love this recipe? You may enjoy these other carnitas recipes, too:

• Carnitas Bowl
• Carnitas Torta
• Pork Enchiladas Verde