Word.ws English Dictionary

carnitas

/kɑɹ.ˈni.tɑs/

carnitas noun: a Mexican dish of strips or chunks of pork (or sometimes other meat) which are braised or roasted, especially in their own fat.

carnitas: a Mexican dish of strips or chunks of pork (or sometimes other meat) which are braised or roasted,...
Image: Mike McCune, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

carnitas pl (normally plural, singular carnita)

  1. (plural-normally, uncountable) A Mexican dish of strips or chunks of pork (or sometimes other meat) which are braised or roasted, especially in their own fat.
    • Carnitas is easy to make, even if you don't have a whole pig to cook.2006, Deborah M. Schneider, ¡Baja! Cooking on the Edge, page 18
    • I was trying to bring supplies across the border to cook a trio of ceviche — marinated raw fish in lime — and duck carnitas with mole coloradito, for the festival’s gala dinner.2007 January 23, Scott Lindquist, As Told To Christopher Elliott, “A Yankee Chef With a Mexican Flavor”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 19 Sep 2019

Examples of carnitas in a sentence

  • Broil […] until the carnitas are crispy to your liking.2015, Caroline Potter, All-American Paleo Table: Classic Homestyle Cooking from a ..., page 66:
  • […] he bites into his gordita, filled with so much carnitas, cilantro, radishes, salsa, and cheese, […]2023, Jonny Garza Villa, Ander & Santi Were Here: A Novel:
  • […] carnitas are eaten in the morning or early afternoon.2025, Julie Meade, Moon Mexico City (Moon Travel Guides)

Forms of carnitas

singularcarnita

Origin of carnitas

Borrowed from Spanish carnitas, diminutive of carne (“meat”).

Questions about carnitas

What does carnitas mean?
Carnitas means a Mexican dish of strips or chunks of pork (or sometimes other meat) which are braised or roasted, especially in their own fat.
How do you use carnitas in a sentence?
Broil […] until the carnitas are crispy to your liking.
What part of speech is carnitas?
Carnitas is a noun.
How do you pronounce carnitas?
Carnitas is pronounced /kɑɹ.ˈni.tɑs/.

Words near carnitas in the dictionary

  1. carnistic
  2. carnists
  3. carnita
  4. carnitarian
  5. carnitarians
  6. carnitas
  7. carnitin
  8. carnitine
  9. carnitines
  10. carnityl
  11. carnitylated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carnitas (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-carnitas.wav.

Cite this entry: “carnitas.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carnitas. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.