Beach Pig Roast - This look about right? Any tips?

Hey All -

We have a pig lined up for a roast this weekend and I want to make sure I am not missing anything in the planning. Been using a variety of sources (see below) for figuring this out including some folks that did the majority of the heavy lifting.

Timeline For a Friday Evening Eat - Assuming 70lb pig
- Friday morning we should allow 2 hours for lighting the fire, getting it hot and the pit all ready for the pig. Hole will be dug the day before
- Allow up to 9 hours to cook - if done early pull.
- We should allow 1-1.5 hours from when the pig is done until it is ready to be served. We will have to dig it out, pull it out, carry it to the "carving station" and then get all of the meat off of it.

General Strategy:
1. Bottom of hole you start fire - charcoal and then wood on top - get to 600-800 degrees?
2. Cover fire with the brick / stones
3. Cover stones with the stalks - in our case the corn stalks
4. Wrap the pig with chicken wire - will also need some 20 gauge wire to bundle.
5. Set pig on top of stalks
6. Cover the pig with banana leaves
7. Cover leaves with burlap sacks that are wet
8. Bury.
9. Drink beers.

* Note - some people do it where they wrap in banana leaves then burlap then chicken wire - this may be easier and we may switch to that

Questions:
1. Do we need to use a rub / does it make a difference?
2. Do we need to stuff with anything? Was thinking pineapple/rosemary/onion and some other assorted items
3. If no rub - just liberal kosher salt and pepper on the outside?
4. Aside from a BBQ sauce and a chimichurri - any suggestions on other fun sauces?

General Sources
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=29309&hilit=pig
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/dinin ... .html?_r=0
http://www.marthastewart.com/938718/haw ... ast#938718
http://www.instructables.com/id/Luau-Pi ... With-Hot-/
http://www.alohafriends.com/imu.html

Solid plan. I'd consider adjusting some of the times and prep.

Consider burning a lot of wood down to embers the night before with the rocks on or near. The fire will be easier to deal with in the morning and the heat will be more even. The mass of earth around the fire and rocks need to get up to temp. An hour or 2 to get it right would make me very nervous about getting the fire burned down and the pig on in time. Everything is so much easier with a preheat the night before. Same as bakeries with old coal ovens. They don't fire it up and hour or 2 before and jack it up. The thermodynamics favor a longer runway before cooking. I don't think you should be going for 800 degrees (pizza temps), even with stones and stalks. 1/2 that will work fine. You want the fire to be out before you start adding stuff on top of it. I'd pencil in more prep time for the fire and pit and less for the pig. Don't be trying to save money on wood and charcoal. Have plenty on hand.

Consider placing some hot rocks in the carcass. I don't like stuffing them with anything that could affect cooking time or evenness. You want the cavity and inside bones to get hot if you can. That said, things that flavor the pig that you won't eat at the end can work well - a bag of onions, garlic etc. is fine.

9 hours is way more than needed for a 70# pig at these temps with the technique you are using. That's small. It won't get "worse" or dry out but it might become soup. Check it after 5-6 for sure, though only once because you don't want to lose the heat.

The time between pulling and eating can't be that long. Have the logistics down: sturdy table covered with cardboard and/or banana leaves, wire cutters, cleavers, tongs, rubber gloves for pulling, some strong youngsters with work gloves. After you take it off the pit, people will descend and no one wants to wait an hour.

I use salt and a thin vinegar and sour orange based mop that is something between Cuban mojo, Yucatan cochinita pibil sauce and NC BBQ sauce. I don't think heavy rubs or sauces are great when using your "wet"/steaming technique.

Good luck. It's going to be great.

PS: I followed your last link to the Hawaiian pig roaster (I think I've had their food at a luau). Good advice there. Note that the recommendation for a 200# pig is 8-10 hours. Your animal is 1/3 that weight, and the depths of the meat you need to cook to temp (hams and shoulders) aren't anything like a 200# hog. Less heat, less time, less everything for your little pig or you are going to have a stew, I'm thinking.

What a fantastic response. Thanks so much for all the information! I am sending this off to the team right now and am getting excited to try this whole thing.

Be sure to have a huge amount of sides! We did this at my winery once and the pig totally disappeared *instantly*!! Luckily we had lots of beans, slaw, potato salad etc as back up.

Geo

HI,

I hope you will report back on the experience.

I once attempted to do a pig roast, pre-internet with very little information. It was a disaster. I wouldn't talk about it for a long time, because it was just so embarrassing. I really had no clue.

You are so far ahead of where I started, I sometimes think about giving it a shot sometime. I then remembered how bad it was, then shutdown that idea quick.

Have fun!

Regards,

All-

Well the weekend and pig roast has come and gone. I don’t want to say it was a failure but we are currently rethinking what went wrong.

To recap:
- Followed the directions up thread pretty closely however we did not get the fire started the night prior. Instead we started the burn at around 8AM and then ultimately put the pig in around 10:45.
- The pig was 64lbs. We brined it and then used a rub. Not sure the rub would have done anything. The stuffing of oranges, pineapples, garlic, and onion we would do again.
- We used two huge bags of charcoal to get the fire going then added tons of firewood. I wish I had a measurement for the amount of firewood.
- We had bricks in the bottom of the pit then coals then fresh corn stalks then the pig which was wrapped in banana leaves/wet burlap/chicken wire. More stalks on top of the pig. Then a canvas over those stalks and then we finally buried it all.

We watched the temp rise from about 53 to about 110 over the first couple hours and were feeling decent about the production. Then about 4PM we realized it had more or less stalled so we dug up the pig to check. After a couple different temp readings we realized it was on average about 115 and that there was almost no more heat from below. So we pull out all the stalks and threw in two more bags of charcoal (from the place at North/Halsted) and got those blazing. At peak heat we put the stalks back down, pig back in, and recovered everything.

Seemed like we were doing well after this as we watched the temp then rise over the next 2 hours or so to 163. We thought we had won this battle so we dug it up again and then ran some temp checks elsewhere on the pig and realized for some reason the hind leg had gotten much hotter and the rest of the pig was only about 125-130. So we buried it again. Watched it for about another 90 minutes and it didn’t budge. We were out of firewood and time.

Pulled it / butchered / and finished on the grill. The meat was ultimately good but nothing worth that effort.

In hindsight my thoughts:

1. Start fire the night before.
2. Have a bed of hot coals that are at least 12” deep. I think at the beginning we may have lacked this. This means much more firewood than we had.
3. We used bricks that were about 5” wide and 1” thick. We lined the bottom and sides up about a foot. We did NOT put any rocks or bricks on top of the coals. I think this may be an issue.
4. Starting fire temp may have been too low initially. I did one surface temp read and got 450 but thats my only data point.
5. We were in a beach sand pit and had tons of sand seeping in. Not a huge deal but I think over time it may have diluted the heat focus from the fire. Again not a game changer but was annoying.
6. We may have had too much insulation on the pig.

Would love to hear any thoughts. It was a bummer but we still had a ton of fun doing it all.

Very useful info here, thanks for sharing. I plan to do something similar for a wedding which is more than a year away, so I am crossing my fingers that more people chime in with opinions and techniques!

Do you have pictures of the process, maybe those would help people troubleshoot. What kind of rocks did you use and how many? What kind of wood?

I've been reading a lot about luau lately because I have a trip to Hawaii coming up soon. I also watched a recent Tony Bourdain show on CNN about Hawaii where they cooked a great looking pig in an imu. Using rocks as part of the cooking process seems to be a must. The fact that you didn't use any to retain the heat as the fire burned down probably contributed to your problems.

While I don't agree with the use of lighter fluid as mentioned in the article, here's a link to an instructables article that explains the process pretty well http://m.instructables.com/id/Luau-Pig- ... With-Hot-/

Sorry to hear it didn't come off perfectly - but it sounds like you had good food to serve at the end. I'm sure it was stressful. I cooked an 85# the same day for a big crowd and it sure takes a lot of faith in physics and things unseen even after a decade or 2 of whole hog BBQs. With the brick pit I can't see the pig either for most of the cook, but I can address problems with temps trending low by adding more coals or stoking. That's a luxury dirt pits deny you.

I'd guess there was just too much mass taking heat from the pig and not enough radiating it into the meat. Sounds like quite a lot of cold corn stalks cooking before the pig. The oranges and stuff are also like insulation for the part of the animal that cooks last and slowest. They put hot rocks inside in HI, as Steve notes. Cooking inside-out (or in the case of a Carolina/Tennessee style pit, from the belly up) is much more consistent and quick. And while digging it up sounds like it was 100% necessary, "starting over" is very tough to pull off. You lose heat and momentum. It takes a long time to get those back. I'd re emphasize the need to burn down well in advance as well.

Yet, for all the possible causes of the temp going down fast, it still sounds like it was at worst a near miss, temp-wise. Next time you'll nail it.

Reading all that went into trying to duplicate an ancient cooking technique made me think that if I was going to give it a whirl I'd do one or two practice cooks before inviting anyone over. Have people/place that would take my practice meat to eat.

That's a ton of work you did there. An you learned a bunch too.

it also made me think of this, but I know it's not as romantic of a process:

http://www.lacajachina.com/Pig-Roast-p/lcc-g101.htm