How We Cooked a Whole Roast Suckling Pig on a Gas Grill
100.8 هزار بار بازدید -
13 سال پیش
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We decided to try cooking
We decided to try cooking a whole pig on a Weber Genesis grill with a rotisserie. I looked for recipes and "how to" articles online, and was surprised at how little help I found. Several sites even said that backyard grills were simply not up to the task of cooking a whole pig (although many of them said they'd be happy to sell you something that could). We decided to go for it anyway, and the results were amazing.
If you want to try this yourself, the first thing you'll need is a pig (big surprise, huh?). We decided to order one online - we got a suckling pig weighing 15-19 lbs from a site called exoticmeatmarkets.com. You'll find that the cost of a small pig is about the same as the cost of much larger ones. This is because what you're paying for is not the meat as much as it is the labor involved in butchering it. The 19 pounder that we got barely fit onto the spit. Our grill could not have managed anything larger but fortunately it was enough to feed our party of 10 guests with plenty of leftovers.
Be sure that you have your pig delivered a couple of days early because it will need to thaw before you cook it. We kept ours on ice in a large cooler until Saturday morning, when we rubbed it inside and out with salt and pepper. Six hours later we covered it in a marinade (see the video) using a recipe from a site called cuban-christmas.com (see http://icuban.com/food/mojo.html ). The recipe calls for:
o 5 HEADS of garlic
o salt
o black peppercorns
o oregano
o sour orange juice
Sour orange juice comes from Seville oranges, which we didn't have, so we mixed two parts orange to one part lemon and one part lime. And yes, you read it right, that's five large HEADS of garlic or about 70 to 80 cloves. Grind them using a mortar and pestle. For every ten cloves of garlic, add 1/2 teaspoon salt, six black peppercorns, and some oregano. Mash them all together into a paste. Scoop the paste out into a bowl and stir in a quart of the sour orange juice. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes (or refrigerate if you're marinating the next day, like we did).
After being covered in the marinade, the pig went into the cooler overnight until we were ready to stuff it on Sunday morning. We made the stuffing on Saturday night:
o Cook 4 red onions in butter over low heat until the onions are soft.
o Pour in a half-bottle of red wine. Let this simmer and reduce until the mixture becomes a yummy, dark red glop. If you find that the onions are becoming dry you can add a little bit of water to the pan and keep cooking.
o Add some chopped-up kielbasa or other pork sausage to the mix.
o Then add pieces of bread and stir well. (About a ½ loaf of cubed white bread).
o Season to taste with salt and pepper.
o Take off the heat and add garlic and sage. Set aside until cool to the touch.
Sunday morning, we put the skewer into the pig's mouth, pushed it down the length of his spine and out near the tail, using the forks to secure it. Next, we added the stuffing and sewed the cavity shut using 2 ordinary turkey trussing kits. Finally, we used kitchen string to tie the legs under the body. Some recipes recommended using a u-shaped bolt to secure the pig to the skewer. For a small pig like ours, this would have been overkill. But you do want to be sure the legs don't flop around while turning. (Our pig kicked the flavorizer bar off of the middle burner and dripped fat and stuffing all over it, creating a mess we called: "The Revenge of the Pig")...
Finally, we turned on the gas (indirect heat) Our grill is an older model with burners that go from side-to-side (not front to back like many newer ones). Our rotisserie is therefore parallel to the burners, so you can cook on it without having any fire directly under the food. I'm not sure how (or even if) you can do that on the new grills that have the knobs on the front and burners that go from front-to-back. (Comments anyone?)
Using the outer (front and back) burners only, we let her spin for about 4 hours at 300 degrees F. According to some recipes I saw online, if you don't use stuffing the cooking time can be cut in half, but for me it was well worth the extra time. After 4 hours, a meat thermometer showed the temperature had reached 160 throughout, so we turned off the gas and cut the power to the rotisserie, allowing the pig to roll on its back (hanging upside down from the spit, with the feet up). As the grill cools off, this allows the meat to rest (don't skip this step! It makes a big difference to the juiciness of the meat).
After 30 minutes, we brought the pig into the kitchen for carving. The meat was the most incredibly tender pork I've ever had, and our whole family enjoyed it immensely. (Pig sliders made out of pulled pork from the shoulder was an especially big hit). If you like to cook outdoors and you have a big gas grill, I'd highly recommend you try roast suckling pig for your next party.
If you want to try this yourself, the first thing you'll need is a pig (big surprise, huh?). We decided to order one online - we got a suckling pig weighing 15-19 lbs from a site called exoticmeatmarkets.com. You'll find that the cost of a small pig is about the same as the cost of much larger ones. This is because what you're paying for is not the meat as much as it is the labor involved in butchering it. The 19 pounder that we got barely fit onto the spit. Our grill could not have managed anything larger but fortunately it was enough to feed our party of 10 guests with plenty of leftovers.
Be sure that you have your pig delivered a couple of days early because it will need to thaw before you cook it. We kept ours on ice in a large cooler until Saturday morning, when we rubbed it inside and out with salt and pepper. Six hours later we covered it in a marinade (see the video) using a recipe from a site called cuban-christmas.com (see http://icuban.com/food/mojo.html ). The recipe calls for:
o 5 HEADS of garlic
o salt
o black peppercorns
o oregano
o sour orange juice
Sour orange juice comes from Seville oranges, which we didn't have, so we mixed two parts orange to one part lemon and one part lime. And yes, you read it right, that's five large HEADS of garlic or about 70 to 80 cloves. Grind them using a mortar and pestle. For every ten cloves of garlic, add 1/2 teaspoon salt, six black peppercorns, and some oregano. Mash them all together into a paste. Scoop the paste out into a bowl and stir in a quart of the sour orange juice. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes (or refrigerate if you're marinating the next day, like we did).
After being covered in the marinade, the pig went into the cooler overnight until we were ready to stuff it on Sunday morning. We made the stuffing on Saturday night:
o Cook 4 red onions in butter over low heat until the onions are soft.
o Pour in a half-bottle of red wine. Let this simmer and reduce until the mixture becomes a yummy, dark red glop. If you find that the onions are becoming dry you can add a little bit of water to the pan and keep cooking.
o Add some chopped-up kielbasa or other pork sausage to the mix.
o Then add pieces of bread and stir well. (About a ½ loaf of cubed white bread).
o Season to taste with salt and pepper.
o Take off the heat and add garlic and sage. Set aside until cool to the touch.
Sunday morning, we put the skewer into the pig's mouth, pushed it down the length of his spine and out near the tail, using the forks to secure it. Next, we added the stuffing and sewed the cavity shut using 2 ordinary turkey trussing kits. Finally, we used kitchen string to tie the legs under the body. Some recipes recommended using a u-shaped bolt to secure the pig to the skewer. For a small pig like ours, this would have been overkill. But you do want to be sure the legs don't flop around while turning. (Our pig kicked the flavorizer bar off of the middle burner and dripped fat and stuffing all over it, creating a mess we called: "The Revenge of the Pig")...
Finally, we turned on the gas (indirect heat) Our grill is an older model with burners that go from side-to-side (not front to back like many newer ones). Our rotisserie is therefore parallel to the burners, so you can cook on it without having any fire directly under the food. I'm not sure how (or even if) you can do that on the new grills that have the knobs on the front and burners that go from front-to-back. (Comments anyone?)
Using the outer (front and back) burners only, we let her spin for about 4 hours at 300 degrees F. According to some recipes I saw online, if you don't use stuffing the cooking time can be cut in half, but for me it was well worth the extra time. After 4 hours, a meat thermometer showed the temperature had reached 160 throughout, so we turned off the gas and cut the power to the rotisserie, allowing the pig to roll on its back (hanging upside down from the spit, with the feet up). As the grill cools off, this allows the meat to rest (don't skip this step! It makes a big difference to the juiciness of the meat).
After 30 minutes, we brought the pig into the kitchen for carving. The meat was the most incredibly tender pork I've ever had, and our whole family enjoyed it immensely. (Pig sliders made out of pulled pork from the shoulder was an especially big hit). If you like to cook outdoors and you have a big gas grill, I'd highly recommend you try roast suckling pig for your next party.
13 سال پیش
در تاریخ 1390/10/05 منتشر شده
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