Your carnitas may have come out dry by using the wrong cut of pork or overcooking. Follow these tips to ensure moist and tender carnitas: Use **pork butt instead of pork shoulder. Pork butt has more fat marbling throughout the meat so it stays juicier during cooking, whereas leaner cuts easily become dry. Cook until tender, and then shred. When your pork is tender enough to shred into chunks but not fall apart tender, shred it into larger sections and continue to cook on LOW for 20 minutes until it is fall apart fork tender. This allows the flavorful slow cooker contents to seep into every pork crevice without it becoming overcooked.