New Years Smoked Pig

Well, this year we wanted to do something special and have a few friends over for New Years and after a week of prep my wife decided on a sucking pig roasted in the oven with the trimmings. Things were going off well, but when she went out to buy the pig they were sold out. It could have been that she asked for a lechero (milk man) to roast and not a lechon (suckling piglet).

Oh well, she found one eventually, but when she got it home it turned out that it was too big for the oven so I put my own plan into action. I’d been hoping to smoke said pig in our barbecue and this was my chance! I could get my way and be the savior of the party as well. So here’s the run up. I originally planned on doing a video and got half way through until an event that will be described later. I looked at a few websites and ideas and ended up following the advice of Ray Mears.

The Prep

So the day before I took a coarse salt and coated the pig evenly inside and out. This was done with a patting action as rubbing it just made it all fall off. Then I put it in the fridge in a bag over night. I cleaned everything really well (including myself) as you have to be very careful with raw pork.

The next job was to adapt my bbq, which is an open grill in a brick house. It already has a crank to lift the grill up and down and so I drilled several holes, six inches apart, in the shaft of the crank in preparation to wire it on with non-galvanized wire.

The next morning, I woke up early and faced the less than pleasant task of taking out the pig and strapping it to the rotisserie. The skin was thick and it took a bit of work to get the wire through (especially as my 7am pre-coffee self!). By cutting with my knife I was able to get it done. The wire was tightly bound and I bound the pig’s legs together to keep him in place. They said that sometimes the legs fall off while cooking (presumably at the shoulder), but I haven’t had that experience.

Once imprisoned on his skewer I set to scoring the skin with my knife in a crisscross style so that I had a diamond pattern. I could have scored it a bit deeper in places, but it did the job.

I’ve smoked stuff in various ways, using wooden boxes, etc, but this time I got some heavy duty aluminum foil and put it across the front of the BBQ and locked it in place with wire and some tape. I find that while smoking there’s no problem if you get packing tape on while the bricks are cool. It doesn’t affect the cooking at all or the taste as the heat is coming out, not in.

Next was the roasting.

The Smoking


After setting up the tin foil I started the fire. It was a mix of natural charcoal and wood. Although it is a bit harder to manage with the wood, I find the flavor mix is excellent. I kept it burning low, adding water to the coals whenever it flared up. Every 15-20 minutes I gave the pig a quarter turn, listening to the spatter of fat that dripped down, basting the meat as it went.

This went on for several hours until on turning the crank on one occasion the crank slipped off the shaft and became loose. It was quite the challenge for the rest of the day, but we managed.

Things became complicated when the car broke down on the way to pick up people for the evening. It broke down in the middle of a main road full of traffic in the rain. The alternator had gone on the fritz and I had to get a friend to help me take out the battery and take it home to charge.

I managed to get back in time to baste the pig with honey and then turn up the heat for the final roast.

The Roast

My plan was to do a full roast for the last hour or so to finish it off and get the crackling all ready. It was working great until I went to remove it.

By then, the fire was roaring and it was a challenge to get close, let alone work with the pig to get it off. I decided to take off the foil and place it over the coals to tone it down. This worked for about 5 seconds until I touched the pig and the fat poured off, onto the tinfoil and then flash ignited. Welcome the 4 foot flames.

I took the burning tinfoil away and this just compounded the problem. I managed to get the pig off and onto the grill itself which gave it an unneeded scorching (for effect you know). At this point I remembered the water and doused the coals (not the pig) and we pulled off pieces of the pig and placed them on a platter.

It was this series of events that made me forget to take a video.

The Eating

I’ll definitely be doing this again. The pork was succulent and smokey. It was the perfect compliment to the rest of the meal prepared by my wife. Several ours later I fell into a pork induced coma and slept peacefully despite the fireworks, drunken singing and early morning sounds of people staggering home through the streets.

The evening went off without a hitch and had the added benefit of me getting the car back home late that night in a town full of drunken revelry.  It hadn’t even been broken in to!

So now it’s your turn. What did you do and what great foods did you sample or make! Better yet, what memorable mistakes were made?